


from the cradle to the grave

by tempestaurora



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, F/M, Gen, Identity Reveal, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Not Canon Compliant, Siblings, Tags Updated Throughout Posting, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, abba voice: take a chance on meeeeee, and what would change if tony and nat were siblings, canonical deaths, this fic spans the entire mcu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-06-03 11:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19462600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: “I would kill for a martini,” Natasha commented as they entered the Gala. Her dress was sleek, black, and off the shoulder, and Tony knew it to be an early birthday present from their parents. She’d torn a page out of a magazine a month ago, that dress displayed on a model, and stuck it to her bedroom door, so they’d see it in the hall.“You can kill as much as you like,” Tony replied, “you’re still underage.”She laughed. “Like that ever stopped you. Rhodey told me you got wasted before you were even my age.”“Rhodey’s a snitch.” Still, he relented. “I’ll sneak you one later.”Natasha grinned up at him. “I knew you were my favourite brother for a reason.”“I’m your only brother.”“Then wouldn’t it be depressing if you were my least favourite?”-Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff are siblings. This is how that goes.





	1. the littlest stark

**Author's Note:**

> this is... not what i usually write. but! i'm excited about it, i've written the first four chapters, i'm EXPECTING there to be about eight total, but you know that with me that's always subject to change. if you're here for irondad content, then well, you're gonna be waiting a lil while, but when we get there, it'll be worth it. hopefully. 
> 
> i totally owe like a hundred different people for this idea, starting with van_dyne on tumblr for their post about this and the anon who brought it up to begin with. and also, idk, ciaconnaa, peterparker-noir, seek-rest, and anyone else who got the brunt of me saying 'riddle me this' and then throwing a thousand words at them about nat's particular decisions in different parts of the mcu. you've all been very helpful, thank you.
> 
> the title, by the way, is from bob dylan's song 'oh sister', which you should totally listen to. thanks to everyone who suggested different lines though, you were also super helpful.
> 
> natasha romanoff and tony stark deserve to be siblings. here is evidence a:

**2023**

Clint dropped to his knees and Tony knew.

He was the smartest guy in the room for a reason. Any room, every room – Tony Stark’s mind just worked faster, connecting dots and figuring out the likelihoods of each possibility.

Natasha Romanoff (formerly Stark, always Stark, forever Stark) missed the meeting point: impossible – the GPS he’d placed in her hand a mere hour ago was set to locate this exact moment.

Natasha Romanoff was left behind: unlikely – Clint would never agree to it, he’d send her home before she got the chance to protest.

Natasha Romanoff decided to stay: doubtful – they’d been sent to the barren alien planet of Vormir; there was nothing on that desolate rock worth staying for.

Natasha Romanoff was dead: probable – death was the only thing that could stand between the two of them, and it had tried time and time again. Eventually, death would get it right.

“Where is she?” Steve demanded, the crack in his voice laid bare.

Clint choked out a sob. “She’s gone,” he said. “I couldn’t stop her.”

Tony Stark felt the truth drop onto his shoulders like a weight so heavy he couldn’t hope to lift it: Natasha Romanoff, his little sister, was dead.

**1984**

Howard Stark was late getting home.

It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence; Tony often went days at a time without seeing his father, only knowing he’d been and gone by the crumbs left on a plate by the sink and the ash in the cigar tray forming a pattern he hadn’t seen before. But Howard was supposed to get home a whole _day_ ago, and this time he hadn’t arrived and gone again in the dark, hadn’t smoked by the fire or eaten breakfast before vanishing – this time he hadn’t been home at all.

Maria Stark, Tony’s mother, set the phone back on the receiver. “He’ll be back in an hour,” she said. Her hair had lightened three shades from blonde to grey in the past few years, but her eyes were as vividly blue as always. They lit up as she smiled now, moving to his side and running a hand through his untamed hair.

“Did he say why he’s late?” Tony asked. He didn’t care exactly, but he was intrigued all the same. Howard Stark had life down to an exact science; he had itineraries for his itineraries, and nothing – not even his son – could knock even a dent in them.

“No, but he did sound a little… strange,” his mother replied. She smoothed his hair down and cupped his face. “I’m sure all will be revealed in an hour. Why don’t you wash up? And get changed, maybe.”

Tony glanced down at his stained _we begin bombing in five minutes_ t-shirt and breathed out a long-suffering sigh. “Fine,” he said at last and heaved himself off the sofa. “I wonder what could keep the oh-high-and-mighty Howard Stark a whole twenty-four hours longer than he planned.”

It turns out, it was a girl.

A ten-year-old, to be exact, with choppy red hair and sly green eyes, who followed silently behind Tony’s father when they arrived.

“Howard,” Maria started, then stopped. She took a breath. “Who is this?”

Howard gestured for the girl to step forward and she obeyed, her hands clutching a small music box tightly. On the top was a ballerina, poised to dance, and Tony imagined it twirled around and around when the music played.

“This is Natasha,” he introduced. “Natasha Romanova. She will be living with us from now on.”

“ _Howard_ ,” Maria hissed as Tony muttered, “I didn’t know you could hire the help so young.”

Howard turned his glare to his son first. “She is not _the help;_ she is your sister now—”

“ _Howard,_ ” Maria repeated. “You can’t just—” She stopped to look at the girl. “Jarvis, would you mind taking Natasha to the kitchen? Maybe make some tea and find the biscuits?”

“Of course, Mrs Stark,” Jarvis said from where he stood diligently at the door. Natasha followed Jarvis out and Tony was tempted to follow, knowing that an explosive argument was likely to begin in just a second, but he stayed, eyes trained on his father’s cold expression.

“Maria,” he began, but she immediately cut him off.

“ _No._ You cannot just bring a little girl back here and tell us she’s our _daughter_ , now; tell Tony that he has a _sister._ This is ridiculous, Howard. Where did she come from? Where are her parents?”

“They’re dead,” he replied, and the room went quiet. Then: “Her father, Ivan Romanova, was murdered yesterday. He was a Russian double agent, working with the US. He had no will, no family, no final requests, so it was decided that his daughter should be brought back to the States.”

“But why _us?_ ” Maria whispered, and Tony stepped quietly to the door.

“Because we have all this space,” Howard said. “We have the means to raise her, so we will. Her papers should be ready in a few days, and then she becomes Natasha Stark, understood?”

He wasn’t asking permission, nor asking for Tony’s mother to do this _with_ him. No, Tony knew the decision had been made, and it was now up to the rest of them to make the space and raise a whole human being at the drop of a hat.

Maria nodded and Tony left the room.

He moved silently towards the kitchen, at the back of the mansion, and peered around the doorway there, to where Natasha sat at the kitchen table, a pot of tea made and untouched and a selection of biscuits and cakes laid out on a plate.

 _Natasha Stark,_ he thought. _My little sister._

He wasn’t sure about the words. He’d been an only child for fourteen years – was a decade past the time when he’d begged for a sibling over anything else. Now he was used to being alone, telling his secrets to his robots and nothing else. He wasn’t prepared for this; for a Russian little sister and the dynamics of the family shifting to the left.

Tony thought he was being sneaky, watching from the doorway – but apparently he wasn’t. As he watched, Natasha’s eyes darted up from where they’d been staring at the bounty on the dining table, landing on him in his hiding place. Now as he watched, she settled the music box in her hands gently on the table, and reached forward, picking up a pink wafer. She took a bite of it before speaking.

“It’s rude to spy,” she said, her accent Russian and her words pointed.

Tony leaned against the door frame, crossing his arms. “It’s rude to talk with food in your mouth,” he replied.

Natasha did something like a smile and nodded. “I suppose we are both very rude, then.”

“I suppose we are.”

*

**_THE SECOND STARK HEIR_ **

****

Natasha pointed at the front-page article on the kitchen table, presumably by Jarvis, who left the newspaper there every morning like clockwork. “Is that me?”

Natasha leaned over his shoulder, kneeling on the chair next to him while he ate his cereal. Her little fingers dug into his shoulder and her pointing hand covered up half the words. He batted her away. She’d warmed up to Tony quickly; faster than anyone else in the house, anyway. Though it had been two months, she was still unlikely to let anyone else touch her, unless it was Maria braiding her hair or brushing it out. She had recoiled at the few times Howard tried to pat her head or place a hand on her shoulder, and then he’d stopped trying, just like he had with Tony.

“Yup,” Tony said, spooning the cereal into his mouth. “That’s you, dummy.”

The photo was black and white; the four Starks leaving a fancy restaurant in Manhattan. Natasha knew how to behave far better than Tony did, and Howard had suggested they all go out for a meal. It had gone well, all things considered; no one fought at a volume higher than a hiss, and when Howard grumbled about Natasha not finishing her meal, Tony ate it for her when his father went to the bathroom.

On the way out, the paparazzi had swarmed, likely tipped off, and taken many photos; the blazing flashes burning Tony’s eyes. The one chosen by The New York Times was of Howard leading the charge, his face devoid of emotion, and Maria close behind, a hand covering her face as she stared at her husband’s feet. Behind them, Tony, tugging Natasha along by her hand, both dressed immaculately for the night.

It wasn’t a family photo, but it was certainly a photo of their family.

Natasha thumped onto her seat and resumed eating her breakfast, ignoring the name he’d taken to calling her – not for a lack of intelligence; she was as sharp as any of the Starks; but because she’d scrunched her nose up the first time he’d said it, and Tony had never seen her look _cute_ before that moment. “Am I an heir?” she asked.

“Heiress,” Tony corrected. “And I assume so. Mom and Dad adopted you. You’re a Stark.”

She hummed like this wasn’t quite right, just like she did every time someone called her a Stark. “My father would say that you should never assume,” she told him. “Don’t make an opinion until you have all the facts.”

Tony glanced over at her. She hadn’t cried once since moving in with them – not to his knowledge anyway. Her room was directly opposite his, and he would’ve thought he would hear a small girl crying in the middle of the night. But instead, she was silent; cheerful enough but always serious. She seemed to miss her father, but not enough that she wanted him back.

Just then, Jarvis walked into the kitchen, and tapped at the watch on his wrist. “Eat up,” he said, “we’re leaving for school in thirty.”

Natasha dug back into her breakfast, but Tony watched her a bit first. She seemed to know she was being watched, just like she always did, but she didn’t mention it. Instead, she shovelled her cereal into her mouth and announced, “Finished!” through the Frosted Flakes she hadn’t finished eating.

Tony pulled a face. “It’s like you were raised by wolves,” he muttered.

She shrugged, swallowing. “Better than being raised by a narcissistic arms dealer,” she retorted. Tony opened his mouth but Natasha quickly cut him off, jumping from her chair and levelling him with a serious expression. “Is there truly an ethical way to be a billionaire?”

Then she skipped off towards her room.

Tony blinked and watched her go.

*

Natasha Stark was Tony’s little sister.

He wasn’t sure how it happened so fast, but by Christmas he couldn’t think of her as anything but. She was sharp and witty, with eagle eyes and a dangerous smile. In November, she turned eleven, and wanted to invite her friends from class to a birthday party – she’d never had one before and wanted one like she’d seen on television. Howard listened to this request and responded by planning a dinner on the special day, inviting all his work colleagues and politician friends, and sitting at the opposite end of the table to Tony and Natasha.

She sulked throughout most of the meal, glaring from her end to Howard’s, and left as soon as desert was finished. The next day, Howard’s ties were all slashed in the middle, severed into pieces and littering the wardrobe floor.

Everyone in the house knew it was Natasha, but she’d never admit to it. When Howard gave up, he glared at Tony, saying, “She was your responsibility; you should’ve been watching her.”

Tony scoffed. “She’s _your_ kid, not mine. You watch her.”

That was the first time Howard had hit Tony since Natasha moved in, and it wouldn’t likely be the last. Tony waited for the red mark from the open-handed slap to fade before going to find her and cheer her up with belated birthday cake, and she peered at him with those all-knowing eyes before finally agreeing to eat it.

He had a little sister and Natasha Stark had a big brother.

Tony hadn’t known it could be like this; that he could trust another person with the things he hid inside himself, that there was someone else out there who would have his back like he had theirs. Natasha often wrapped her pinky finger around his and swore to keep his secret or told one of her own. She’d flop onto the sofa and lean into his side after a long day at school; she’d kick him under the dining room table and back him up in arguments against their Dad.

Tony Stark was finally on a team where he wasn’t the only member.

And then he left her alone.

**1985**

“You _can’t_ go,” Natasha insisted. She plonked herself on the floor, wrapping her arms and legs around his right leg. “You _can’t._ ”

Tony sighed down at her. Her messy red hair was pulled up in some intricate style their mother had probably done, and her dress was unlike anything she’d usually wear. It was a special day, he supposed, so she’d been dressed up for it.

“I’ve got to go,” he told her.

“No, you don’t,” she replied. “You could wait the three years like everybody else! No one goes to college at fifteen.”

“But I’ve already finished high school,” Tony said. “There’s no point in waiting around for three years.”

“It’s not _waiting around._ It’s _living at home with me._ ”

Tony blinked at Natasha and she stared, wide-eyed back. Her eyes were usually cold, searching, observing. They usually held no emotion, and Tony figured that was less to do with her being Russian and more to do with her father being a spy. She hadn’t once spoken of what she’d been up to in the decade before she moved in with the Starks, and Tony had practically given up asking.

Now, though, they were full of desperate emotion. Of pleading and wishing and _begging_ Tony not to go.

The front door was wide open, and Jarvis was waiting in the car, packed with his things. Howard and Maria were out front, talking with Jarvis’ wife, Ana, and no doubt waiting for Tony to climb in the car and vanish from their lives.

“Nat,” Tony said, quiet, and crouched down to her level. “This is really big for me, and I don’t _want_ to leave you—”

“I’ve only been here a year,” she said. “You can’t just go.”

“It’ll be difficult for a while, but I’ll call and write all the time. And I’m sure you can visit, and I’ll come back for all the holidays.”

She frowned. “What am I supposed to do without you here?” she asked. “Who’s going to hang out with me?”

“You have friends at school—”

“But they’re not allowed to come to the house,” she interrupted. “And there’ll be no one to talk to at breakfast, and I’ll be all on my own with Mom and Dad going away all the time.”

“Jarvis will be here—”

“Jarvis isn’t you!”

Outside, Howard called his name.

“I’ve got to go,” Tony said. “I’m sorry, Nat. I really am, but I’ve got to.”

“Tony—”

“Hey, maybe this means you can convince Mom to get you a puppy? That would be cool, huh?” He stood up and pulled Natasha up with him so he could give her a proper hug. When he’d applied for MIT, it was before Natasha’s eleventh birthday, before the word _sister_ rolled so easily off his tongue. He hadn’t thought it would go like this; he thought she’d remain unflappable and witty until the end.

Tony had forgotten for a moment there that she was a child, only three years younger than him.

He pressed a kiss into her hair and pulled away. “I’ll see you at Christmas, okay dummy?”

Natasha frowned. “What about my birthday?”

“I’ll send you a present.”

“It better be a good one.”

Tony laughed and led her to the door. “It’ll be the best present you’ve ever received.”

When Jarvis drove down the driveway, Tony looked out the back window, to where Howard and Maria waved, and Natasha watched, silently, motionless, from the front door.

*

Tony’s roommate arrived two hours after him. Tony’s side of the room was set up; his clothes shoved away in his closest, his desk all ready for him to build on, his bed made the way Ana showed him.

His roommate was taller than him – though who wasn’t? – older than him – though, again, who wasn’t? – and black. He came with two siblings and his mother, and they all stopped when they noticed him sitting on the lower bunk.

“Are you Anthony?” the guy asked, a crease between his eyebrows. Tony imagined what he was thinking; _Oh, this must be my roommate’s younger brother. This short stack couldn’t possibly be attending MIT._

“Yeah,” Tony replied, climbing off the bed to shake his outstretched hand. “Tony Stark.”

“James Rhodes,” he said. “Most people call me Jim.”

“Are you parents already gone?” Jim’s mother asked, placing box on the spare desk.

“Uh, yeah,” Tony lied. His parents hadn’t accompanied him, but Jarvis had left for home already. “It’s just me.”

“Well, if you’d like, you’re welcome to come with us when we grab a bite to eat later. First night at MIT, that’s something to celebrate! I’m Roberta, by the way. That’s Joshua and Lila, Jim’s siblings.” Roberta turned to her family. “I saw a common room down the hall, maybe we should check it out before we leave.”

She tried to usher the younger siblings out the door, but Lila looked back at Tony and cocked her head to the side. “You don’t look old enough for college,” she told him. “Do you just have a baby face, or—”

“Lila!” Roberta said. “Go! Common room!”

They vanished into the hall as Jim shook his head, smiling. “Sorry about her. Younger siblings are all like that – you got any?”

“A little sister.”

Jim grinned, “Then you get it! Anyway, you should totally come out to dinner with us. We saw a Cheesecake Factory ten minutes down the road and Mom’s buying.”

*

At Christmas, when Tony returned, Natasha’s eyes were like they’d been on that first day; sly, cold, calculating. She didn’t immediately hug him like he expected her to, nor did she do much other than watch from her spot on the staircase.

The thought came unbidden: _Natasha Romanova, not Natasha Stark._

The two were decidedly different. One was who she really was, Tony thought, and the other was the role she played. Only, he didn’t know which was which.

He climbed the steps and sat by her side, only an inch of distance between them.

“Jarvis told me you got suspended for attacking one of the other students,” he said mildly, as his parents and the staff of the household moved out of the entrance hall.

“He stole my friend’s calculator,” she replied. “I warned him and he knew what he would get if he didn’t see it returned.”

Tony hummed. Was this a Romanova move or a Stark? “Dad hassled me about grades the minute I walked through the door.”

“So I heard,” she replied. “He’s looking for someone to moan at seeing as he couldn’t moan at me.”

“No?”

“No, I got straight A’s this semester. _And_ I went to that boring Winter Gala without complaining.”

“You hated that Gala last year.”

Natasha nodded. “Mm. But he got mad when I complained last year. I don’t make the same mistakes twice.”

Tony eyed her carefully. She sat straighter than she did when he was around, and she left _little sister_ at the door, presenting only as _Stark daughter;_ presenting only as the person who could get by best in a household she had no choice in joining. Tony knew that she was watching, but he hadn’t realised before that she was changing her behaviour to match.

Natasha had seen every argument, every hiss at the dinner table, and quite possibly, every raised hand and red mark; and she’d adapted to avoid it all.

“That’s funny,” Tony said, lighter than he was feeling. “I make mistakes all the time.”

She quirked a smile then, and leaned into his side, the cold look in her eye warming and her muscles relaxing. “I know,” she said. “You should really work on that.”

This, Tony decided, was the real Natasha. Everything else was the role she played to get by.


	2. twenty years gone by

**2023**

Tony looked out across the lake. The compound sat at his back, and the remaining Avengers stood by his side. At least, the original Avengers, formed back in 2012 when aliens descended from a wormhole above New York City.

Thor, his appearance so much different to how it used to be. Bruce, very much the same, but in a taller, greener way. Steve’s arms crossed tightly over his chest, and Clint sat by the edge of the dock, his feet dangling in the water, head ducked.

This was a family, once.

It hadn’t been for a long time, but once, these were the people Tony called home. It felt dangerous, how different it was now; like they’d taken every wrong turn along the way. Like there was a set path, and somehow they’d fucked it up and walked in the exact opposite direction.

This was Nat’s family, too, right to the end. Because even when Tony couldn’t look at half these people, Nat still could. She would never, _ever_ let go of her best friend, Clint Barton. She would always remain loyal to Steve Rogers, no matter the fight, no matter the enemy… even if it was Tony. There was Bruce Banner, her on-again-off-again boyfriend that Tony knew she still had feelings for, even if they weren’t anywhere near the surface anymore. And Thor – God, who didn’t _love_ Thor? The two of them had secrets that no one on the team could ever hope to decipher.

And Tony…

Tony was her big brother. Nat was his little sister. And he’d lost her.

He wanted to blame Clint so badly; he wanted to yell and lose his goddamn mind – but he couldn’t. He couldn’t hope to do a damn thing when it wasn’t Clint’s fault; when Clint was feeling just as empty as Tony was; when Clint very literally fought Nat to the death to decide who would leap over the edge of the cliff.

They both leaped, in the end, but Natasha hit the ground first.

He sat on the dock beside Clint, pulling off his shoes and socks and letting his feet touch the sun-warmed water. For a moment, they sat there silently, but Tony hated quiet, hated empty spaces that he could fill, so he shifted along until his arm was pressed against Clint’s, and looked at his friend. At Nat’s _best_ friend.

There were tear stains on Clint’s cheeks, and he sniffed now, looking out at the view before turning to Tony. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and Tony wrapped his arms around the archer, holding him tightly as he sobbed.

“It’s not your fault,” Tony replied. “You did everything you could. Nat made her choice and she did it for _you._ ”

Steve, Bruce and Thor eventually drifted over to the edge of the dock, taking their seats next to Tony and Clint, and the five of them waited until the sound of Clint’s crying petered off before saying anything.

“We won’t let her sacrifice be for nothing,” Steve said.

Clint nodded and wiped harshly at his cheeks with the balls of his hands. “We’re gonna bring everyone back,” he said. “And then we’re gonna find out how to reverse the deal with the soul stone.”

Tony placed a hand on Clint’s shoulder and looked out at the view. It was the same one Nat could see from her bedroom in the compound – she said lakes calmed her; that it was easy to become still and peaceful when looking at a lake like this.

“She loved you,” Tony said, sniffing. Clint nodded again. “She loved all of you.”

“So what’s next?” Bruce asked over Thor’s head.

Tony tried to smile, but he couldn’t muster one. “Next, we give her a funeral. With flowers and friends and lots of alcohol. Then, we save the world.”

**1991**

The second-to-last time Natasha Stark was scene in public was at the Winter Gala two days before her eighteenth birthday. She entered arm in arm with her older brother, twenty-one at the time and home early for Christmas break (and his little sister’s birthday), after arriving in the driver’s seat of a violently red Ferrari.

“I think you need a few more lessons,” Tony commented as he climbed out.

“I passed the exam two years ago,” Natasha replied, tossing the keys to the valet and joining him at the edge of the red carpet.

“And yet you ran two red lights and went thirty over the speed limit.”

She cocked an eyebrow. “There was no one else around,” she said. “It was completely safe.”

Natasha linked their arms together as Tony rolled his eyes. “There are plenty of _safe_ things in this world. That was not one of them – oh! Mr Watanabe, nice to see you again – that was _criminal,_ dummy.”

They sidestepped a few familiar faces on the carpet and kept walking towards the entrance, stopping briefly for photographs when yelled at loudly enough. Natasha smiled blindingly, beautifully, and Tony grinned at the cameras. They had both gotten pretty good at their paparazzi smiles.

_The two Stark children_ – there was hardly a time when people would remember they weren’t related. The two looked nothing alike, but their mannerisms were all too similar; they cocked their heads to the side in the same way, could respond with scathing wit to any comment and seemed to be able to talk telepathically.

No one knew who Natasha Stark’s father was – the late Ivan Romanova, double agent – and many assumed her to be the consequence of one of Howard’s pre-marriage (or, even, post-marriage) affairs.

“I would kill for a martini,” Natasha commented as they entered the Gala. Her dress was sleek, black, and off the shoulder, and Tony knew it to be an early birthday present from their parents. She’d torn a page out of a magazine a month ago, that dress displayed on a model, and stuck it to her bedroom door, so they’d see it in the hall.

“You can kill as much as you like,” Tony replied, “you’re still underage.”

She laughed. “Like that ever stopped you. Rhodey told me you got wasted before you were even _my age._ ”

“Rhodey’s a snitch.” Still, he relented. “I’ll sneak you one later.”

Natasha grinned up at him. “I knew you were my favourite brother for a reason.”

“I’m your _only brother._ ”

“Then wouldn’t it be depressing if you were my least favourite?” Natasha rolled her eyes and slipped her hand into his. “Now come on and dance with me. I love this song.”

*

The last time Natasha Stark was seen in public was a month to the day later. December 20th. Four days prior, Howard and Maria had been driving to the airport, via the Pentagon, for a weekend getaway when their car crashed and killed them both.

She stood by Tony’s side in the downpour at the funeral. It was a private affair, but packed with friends, politicians and celebrities. People Tony had never met before, only seen on TV or heard about on the radio came along, and they all left after throwing their white roses onto the matching coffins of Tony’s parents.

His _parents._ Maria and Howard; Mom and Dad.

He threw both roses onto Maria’s coffin, and watched Natasha place one on each.

Then they stood under their shared umbrella as the crowds of mourners dispersed, leaving them alone in the rain.

Natasha’s face was closed off, but there was a wet shimmer to her eyes like she might cry, or could, if she wanted to. She didn’t, though, as they stood there, and Tony remembered how she didn’t cry for her father, either, just got through it with quiet stoniness and the occasional biting comment.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He was two parents down, but she was three, and having turned eighteen the month before, there wouldn’t be a chance of her losing any more. Still, Tony didn’t want her to be wandering the mansion alone, and he was desperate for Christmas to end so he could leave New York and the grief behind him and return to where he was studying abroad.

As if reading his mind, Natasha said, “I’m moving out in January.”

“ _What?_ ”

She nodded. “A colleague of Dad’s offered me a role a few weeks ago and I plan to take it. Lots of travel; I’ll be gone from New York a lot. I wasn’t sure about it before, but now…”

“What’s the position?”

“It’s to do with Intelligence,” Natasha replied. “An offshoot of the FBI. I can still graduate and—”

“And you won’t have to be here.”

“Yes.”

Tony sighed and stared at his parents’ graves. Soon, they’d go to the wake and sit through people telling stories he wasn’t in the mood to hear. All he could think about was that last conversation with his parents; his mother playing “Try to Remember” on piano, his father asking him not to burn the house down by Monday – _so it is Monday? That is good to know; I will plan my toga party accordingly_ – sarcasm being a metric for potential and Tony maybe being a great man someday. It was a backhanded compliment, a _you’re not good enough now, but maybe someday—_

Well someday was too far away for his parents to see, now.

The toga party had been cancelled before he’d even called anyone to spread the word.

He pulled Natasha closer into his side, and her arms wrapped around his torso, head on his shoulder.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know,” she replied. Nat cracked a smile. “Han Solo.”

“Didn’t know you were a fan of cheesy sci fi movies.”

“I’d say they’re fantasy, actually,” she said into his shoulder. “Science fiction relies on an advancement of some kind – like technology or science. Without that, aliens are just fantastical.”

“Do you think aliens exist?”

“We’re at our parents’ funeral, Tony.”

“Still.”

“No,” she replied. “I don’t think aliens exist. Do you?”

He smiled and rubbed her arm. The rain was starting to let up. “No reason not to,” he said.

When they left, people took their photos; their arms wrapped around each other, the sombre expressions; the two of them climbing into a dark chauffeur-driven car for the first time since they learned how to drive. These photos would be spread across the newspapers, across late night talk shows, across the eyes of the world.

Tony Stark and Natasha Stark: the last two Starks left standing.

And then, Natasha Stark was never seen again.

**2010**

Honestly, Tony didn’t think he’d ever see American soil again. He thought his life would be filled with dark caves and endless sand and the barrels of guns. He thought he would know nothing but the foreign taunts of his captors and the ache in the centre of his chest until he died. He thought Afghanistan would be it for him.

And then he’d built a miniaturised arc reactor and Yinsen had placed it in his chest to keep the shrapnel from entering his heart. And then, after that, he’d built a suit of armour. And then, _way_ after that, he’d escaped and been saved.

Rhodey finding him in the desert was almost as wonderful as that first sip of clean water on the helicopter.

And now he was home.

He knew his three-month disappearance would make the news. Of course it would. He just wondered how many people _cared._ If he was better off missing; if people were glad he was gone; if anyone called his phone just to listen to his voicemail.

He wondered if anyone had _left_ any voicemails. 

But Rhodey had been so incredibly relieved that Tony knew at least one person cared – that was enough for him.

Out on the tarmac, he brushed aside the paramedics and their gurney, and b-lined for Pepper by the car. _Pepper Potts._ She’d been an up-and-comer in accounting; her summa cum laude grade in her accounting degree and razor sharp mind meaning that she could spot the problem in the finances and brought it straight to him the moment she realised someone was skimming off the top.

He wouldn’t say he had fallen in love with her, but he definitely wanted to sleep with her on a regular basis, rather than in a one-night-stand kind of way. He also respected her opinion above most others, which—he was probably in love with her. That’s what that probably meant.

Pepper’s eyes were red when he approached. “Shedding some tears for your long-lost boss?”

“Tears of joy,” she replied. “I hate job hunting.”

“Well, vacation’s over. Let’s go.”

As he climbed in the car, he absently wondered what Pepper had been doing for three months. Had she been relaxing in her expensive Stark-paid apartment, or had she been going into the office every day, trying to make up for him being gone? He knew Pepper, so he knew it was the latter.

There were three things he wanted to do, but he only announced two of them. “Call a press conference,” he said, “and take me to get some cheeseburgers. Burgers first, conference right after.”

“You need a _hospital_ ,” Pepper insisted, but Tony waved her away. He _needed_ some cheeseburgers, he _needed_ to call a press conference, and he _needed_ a phone so he could call his sister.

He didn’t say this last one, however, and let the idea sit uncomfortably in his chest, right where the arc reactor was, until the press conference was over and they were headed home.

Pepper was already on the phone, arranging meetings, declining other meetings, and trying to mitigate the damage. Obie had seemed annoyed with the whole _closing down the weapons manufacturing side of the company_ thing – which Tony wasn’t surprised by in the slightest. He’d come around though; they all would. They’d see that Stark Industries could do more than just build things that killed. They’d leave a better legacy than that.

Tony took a long, hot shower when he got home.

He thanked Pepper and sent her home for the day, as the sky had started turning an amber shade and he didn’t want her working herself through the night.

He’d missed showers. He’d missed cheeseburgers. He’d missed alcohol. He’d missed the way the lights slowly brightened when he walked into the house; missed JARVIS’ voice, so similar to the original’s, missed the little things like soap and soft clothes and comfortable mattresses.

He’d missed his sister.

He called her as soon as he was dressed.

“Took your time,” she said upon picking up. She’d lost her Russian accent some twenty years ago – by the time she was fourteen she was speaking like any Upstate New Yorker, though Tony had known her to pick up accents and drop them even quicker whenever she wanted. At some point in her adulthood, she’d mastered voices just as she’d mastered observing in her youth.

“Sorry, I went out for milk.”

“Three months ago?”

“The line at the register was really long.”

She hummed. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Me too.”

“Are you okay?”

“A few cuts and bruises, all superficial.” He sat on his bed and flopped back onto the mattress with a huff. “I’m okay now.”

They were quiet for a minute or so; just breathing and listening to the other live. Listening to gentle inhale and exhale of the other – to think, he might have never seen her again. The last time he saw her in person was on her birthday, when she texted him to meet her at a bar in Malibu. They drank and laughed and then she was gone, as if she’d never been there at all.

_Can’t let the world know what the infamous Stark daughter looks like,_ she said with a lazy smile. Her job was something covert, he knew that much. Something that meant she had to leave the Stark name in the dust; had to become someone new – or, someone old.

Natasha Romanoff was a name only few would recognise.

“We looked for you,” she said, breaking the silence.

“Really.”

“ _I_ looked for you. I tried, Tony. I really did.”

“I believe you.” He closed his eyes. “I’m so tired. The walk from the convenience store was so long.”

She huffed out a laugh. “I can let you go,” she said. “I can call back tomorrow.”

“No,” Tony replied. “Just talk to me. I’m gonna fall asleep but… just talk to me.”

“Okay,” she said, quiet. “I can tell you about the mess my partner caused last weekend. It involves a watermelon, a microwave and an explosive arrow.”

“Sounds good,” Tony mumbled.

There was a beat of silence, before: “I love you, Tony.”

He smiled. “I know.”

“Han Solo.”

“I love you, too, Nat.”

He could hear the smile in her voice. “So we were hiding out in some European country, you know, one of the Baltics…”

*

“The truth is… I am Iron Man.”

Oh how he loved the chaos that ensued. He was Iron Man. _The_ Iron Man. The world’s first superhero. The world’s _only_ superhero. And whatsherface Everhart could _suck it._

His phone started ringing as soon as Happy led him out of the conference room. Pepper was glaring up a storm and the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division guy Tony couldn’t remember the name of was giving him a speech he wasn’t listening to about _reading from the cards and using the alibi he was yadayadayada._

Tony picked up the phone call after one look at the caller ID.

“You’re shitting me,” Nat said.

“Have you ever started a conversation with _hello?_ ”

“No, and I never plan to.” Tony waved off Pepper’s annoyance and the government guy’s never-ending rant. “What the hell was that? _I am Iron Man?_ Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

“Well, you see, with the suit on, that’s rather difficult to do.”

“Are you wearing the suit right now?”

“No?”

“Then someone could’ve shot you in the head three times over by now. Tony! You’re putting yourself in danger.”

“Isn’t that what you do? Aren’t you being a hypocrite?”

“I’m not—Tony. This is serious.”

“I’m _being serious,_ dummy,” Tony replied. “I am Iron Man. It’s who I am, and I’m gonna—gonna do a lot of good with this.”

“So you’re not doing it for the attention or to spite that hot reporter?”

“She was rather attractive, huh?”

Rhodey entered the room, his brows furrowed. He opened his mouth to probably tear Tony a new one, but Tony waved him away.

“I’m going to be careful,” he promised. “And you can come see the suit whenever you’d like.”

“Is that so?”

“Just not on weekends, evenings, Monday through Thursday, and – oh, you know what? Friday’s kind of my day off, I really don’t want to have to do a _work thing_. You know what, Miss Potts can organise it if you give her a call.”

Nat scoffed. “I’m not going to call your assistant to see my own brother.”

Tony hummed. “Well, I can get back to you on possible dates then.”

“You’re doing that thing again.”

“What thing?”

“That thing where you talk to me like you don’t care about me so you can annoy me into hanging up.”

“Is it working?”

“ _Tony._ ”

The glares in the room were mounting, and Tony was having trouble not saying, _Natasha Alianovna Stark, let me be a superhero already_. Out of everyone in this room, only Rhodey knew he and Nat still talked, let alone had met her before – he didn’t want that to change and neither did she.

“Listen I think I’m about to receive a second asshole, so I might need to get off the line,” he said, eyes flitting between them all.

“Oh, is Iron Man susceptible to a little yelling? That’s probably a fatal flaw in the design.”

“I’m going to hang up on you, now.”

“Don’t get yourself killed.”

“I know.”

“Han Solo.”

Natasha hung up and Tony lowered the phone, looking at Pepper warily. “May I choose the placement of the new asshole or will that be decided for me?”


	3. i am natalie rushman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> natasha romanoff deserves a funeral, fuck u russo brothers.

**2023**

Natasha didn’t have just one funeral. She had hundreds.

All over the world people held services in her honour. The symbol of the Black Widow was spray painted across walls and monuments, was hidden on the corner of every street in stickers and permanent marker. Candlelight vigils happened in every major city in the world, and Tony attended the one in New York.

He’d been at her private funeral that afternoon. Maybe it was more of a memorial; her body never recovered from the bottom of the tallest cliff in Vormir. Every still-living friend of the Avengers, of Natasha, came to say goodbye at the lake beside the compound. She’d lived there for the five years since the Snap; she’d called this place her home and tried to do her best in looking after it.

Tony recognised a few people from school; those she’d cut off contact with after her foray into spying and crime in her twenties; as well as some of his mother’s friends who’d come by the mansion often during her teenage years, a few people Tony could only assume were fellow agents.

Pepper brought him a clean black suit to wear, and Morgan wore her only black dress. She didn’t seem to understand what was really happening, other than Auntie Nat was gone and she wouldn’t be coming back.

They all attended the vigil in Manhattan.

Hundreds of people lined the streets, each holding a candle. Morgan held her own as she balanced on his hip, her head tucked into his neck. People took their photos, but Tony hardly noticed them at all; he could barely even take comfort in Morgan’s tiny body at his side.

His little sister was dead on some alien planet and he couldn’t even bury her body.

People sang, though what songs he wasn’t sure. The Avengers held their candles and stood by his side, unwavering, unmoving.

Natasha had been a double agent and she’d broken hearts; they’d struggled and fought each other, they’d argued well into the night multiple times and they’d keyed each other’s cars on more than one occasion. But she was his and he was hers, and they were the Avengers’.

“Daddy,” Morgan whispered in his ear, her voice slow with sleep.

“Yes, baby?”

“Is Auntie Nat in heaven?”

Tony pressed his lips into a thin line. Nat didn’t believe in heaven, and after everything she did it was unlikely she ended up there. Still, he said, “I don’t know. But wherever she is, I’m sure she’s happy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, sweetie. She’s probably lying on a beach somewhere with a martini. Or driving recklessly on an empty highway. Or she’s on stage, dancing ballet.” Morgan nodded into his neck; Nat had taught her a few ballet moves on a warm afternoon not too long ago. She’d learnt before her father had died, and their parents had paid for the lessons to continue after; her face had always been poised and serious when she danced, but Tony knew she loved it. “Yeah. Wherever she is, she’s happy.”

**2011**

Tony slammed his gloved fist into Happy’s palm, bouncing on the balls of his feet and following it up with a punch from the other hand. They moved around the ring, circling each other. Happy called out commands and Tony followed; ducking and dodging away from his driver’s swipes.

Their weekly boxing session was cut short when Pepper walked in the room.

“Alright, it’s time,” she announced. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

Tony paused, glanced over at her. “We’re getting married? It’s about time.” Happy whacked him. “Ow!”

“Don’t let your guard down,” Happy instructed.

“ _No,_ ” Pepper said. “The notary’s coming down. I promise this is the only time I’ll ask you to sign over your company. So if you want to change your mind—”

“Nope,” Tony interrupted, dodging another one of Happy’s hits. “CEO isn’t really my _thing._ I’ve done it for twenty years and I don’t like it. Time for someone new to take over.”

Tony had a feeling Pepper wanted to argue a little more, but she’d been arguing for three days now. He just didn’t really get why she didn’t want to take it; she’d been practically running the company since she became his personal assistant – and if she could handle him, she could handle a Fortune 500 any day of the week.

The door swung open and Pepper breathed out a long breath. “Let’s go then.”

Tony called time on the boxing and spun on one foot to face the two women in the room. His eyes immediately caught on the second. _Natasha._

He opened his mouth to – he didn’t know what, yell, shriek, scream to the high heavens, but she got there first.

“Natalie Rushman,” she introduced. “I’m from legal.”

Tony’s mouth slammed shut as he short circuited a little. _Natalie Rushman?_ What the fuck? Did that mean—

Tony was all kinds of smart, so he put the pieces together quickly. Nat was using a fake name which probably meant she was on assignment. She hadn’t been doing anything particularly… _illegal_ in a few years now; ever since her partner, referred to only as _Bird Brain_ or _Clint_ thankfully took her out of the path she’d been following since she took up the job offer at eighteen. What she’d told him was _Intelligence_ was actually shady spying and possible assassinations – he wasn’t sure, she wouldn’t say.

Nat wouldn’t infiltrate his company with any ill will anyway – he knew her well enough for that – which led to the conclusion that whoever her omnipotent secret government organisation was, they wanted someone in his company. Did they know Natasha was his sister? Or had she kept that a closely guarded secret and bartered her way onto this assignment?

Either way, Natasha Stark was not allowed to be in the room, only Natalie Rushman.

He swallowed. “Nice to meet you, Miss Rushman.”

Tony swung himself under the ring’s highest rope and climbed down to their level.

“I have the contracts,” Natasha said, looking between he and Pepper. “All I need is a thumb print and a signature from each of you.”

“And then she’s CEO,” Tony said.

Nat nodded. “And then she’s CEO.”

Tony blew out a breath, and pulled the boxing gloves off as Nat started flicking through the pages of her binder. Did they need a notary for this? Was she notarised as a part of her secret training? If people found out the company was handed over to Pepper via a spy would it still count?

Tony grabbed his water bottle and chugged half of it. This was too much to think about. He missed the days when Nat wanted to be a ballerina or a lawyer. He missed the days when he didn’t know about her day job.

He and Pepper took turns signing and pressing their thumbs onto the page, and then Natasha smiled. “All done. Congratulations Miss Potts.”

“Thank you, Natalie,” Pepper replied. “Tony, Natalie’s going to be hanging around a little bit – I’m in need of an assistant during the changeover and—”

“She’s going to be your assistant?” Tony asked. “She’s in legal, isn’t it a waste of her skillset?”

“I was in accounting,” Pepper reminded him, “and now I’m the CEO of your company. Miss Rushman’s already agreed to it. She’ll be around for a few weeks and help with the influx of paperwork, too.”

“Right, right.” Tony span slowly in a circle, eyes meeting with Happy’s for a moment. “Miss Rushman,” Tony said, “do you box?”

“I’ve done it a few times,” she replied evenly.

“Why don’t you step in the ring?”

“Oh, I don’t—”

“Tony, she’s not—”

“No, go on,” Tony said, “I need a break anyway. Happy, give her a lesson.”

Natasha looked between the three of them before shrugging and slipping off her shoes. She set the binder on the floor and climbed into the ring as Tony and Pepper settled back onto the chair at the side of the room.

“So you’ve boxed before,” Happy said in the ring.

“I have, yes.”

“What, like, Tae Bo? Booty Boot Camp? Crunch?”

Tony caught the flicker of annoyance across Natasha’s face. “How do I spell your name, Natalie?”

“R-U-S-H-M-A-N,” she called back, looking over. Tony could feel her eyes on him as he searched her on the table beside him, the surface doubling as a computer screen.

“Are you Googling her?” Pepper hissed.

Tony hummed, clicking on her file. “Wow, very impressive individual… She’s fluent in French, Italian, Russian, Latin—who speaks Latin?”

“No one speaks Latin.”

“No one speaks Latin?”

“It’s a dead language,” Pepper replied. “You can write it or read it, but you can’t speak it.”

Tony wondered how much of this was fake. He didn’t put it past her to speak so many languages but—

“Did you model in Tokyo?” he asked Pepper. “She modelled in Tokyo.” He clicked on a photo then immediately clicked off it. _When did she have the time to model in Tokyo?_ Or was that another lie on the pile that was mounting up?

After twenty years of coming and going, there and gone in a heartbeat, _this_ was how she came back into his life? Really?

Over in the ring, Natasha was still looking over.

“Rule number one,” Happy said, catching her attention. “Never take your eyes off your opponent.” As he went to take a swing at her, Nat caught his hand and flipped him over, legs flying over his head as she went. She pinned him on the mat.

“Oh, my God!” Pepper cried, standing up.

Tony just stared, wide-eyed from his seat. Natasha let go and climbed out of the ring as Happy stood back up, insisting he slipped. His sister met his eye once, before collecting her things.

“If that’ll be all,” she said, and Pepper gestured for her to leave. Tony watched her go.

*

Tony had no idea where legal was, so he had a long conversation with a board member on the way to the elevator and asked them to press the floor for legal for him. When he arrived, he stopped at the door that read _RUSHMAN_ and frowned. She had her own office? How long had she been here without telling him?

He knocked, and she called for him to enter.

Natasha didn’t speak until he shut the door, and when he did she settled back in her chair.

“I thought you’d visit.”

“Hello,” he said, because she wasn’t going to.

“Hi. How’s things?”

Tony raised an incredulous eyebrow. “ _How’s things?_ Seriously? You _infiltrate_ your way into my company—”

“I did no such thing,” she interrupted. “I applied for the position, fair and square.”

“Using a fake name.”

“I don’t want to use the Stark name to get what I can earn.”

“And a fake resume.”

“I can speak all those languages,” she replied, mild.

“You can’t speak Latin, only write and read it.”

“ _Si dicas ita._ ”

He blinked at her and she rolled her eyes.

“If you say so,” she repeated. “Listen, I have a lot of work to do—”

“No, I’m your boss right now, Nat,” he said. “You’re gonna listen to me.”

“I believe Miss Potts is my boss.”

“She runs the place, but I _own the company._ Remember? You didn’t want it. You said no when I offered, you declined to accept it when the _lawyers_ offered. _Nat._ ”

“Tony.”

He huffed out a sigh. “You didn’t even bother to _call first?_ To give me a heads up? To just say _hey, how you doing?_ ”

“I just asked _how’s things_ ,” she replied, then shook her head. “It’s difficult. I’m not supposed to have contact with you outside the parameters of Natalie Rushman. Even _this_ is breaking protocol.”

Tony looked around her office. It was personal in an impersonal way. There were a few tiny trinkets with no meaning to him on her desk, and a photograph to the side of someone he’d never seen before, and likely, neither had she. On the wall was a fake degree certificate in law. There was a potted plant in the corner, and nothing more.

“Why are you here?”

“Assignment.”

“What’s the assignment?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

Tony shook his head. “Are you investigating SI? Is it _bad?_ Are you trying to destroy my company? Nat – come on. I need a heads up about this; if you’re here to—”

“It’s nothing bad,” she told him, any amusement vanishing from her face. “Seriously. If it were bad, I’d warn you.”

“ _Would you?_ ”

She blinked. “Yes. I would.”

Tony took a long breath, then nodded. “Fine. Play a notary. But if you hurt this company or Pepper, I swear to God, Nat—”

“Have a little trust, Tony.”

Easy for her to say – _he_ hadn’t been some double-triple-illegal agent. _He_ hadn’t become a super spy. _He_ was an open book; a deck of cards spread out, facing upwards, while she was closed, hiding every card she owned so close to her chest that he couldn’t even see if she was holding anything at all.

*

As Pepper and Happy slept through the flight, Natasha moved silently from her chair over to one next to Tony. The private jet was quiet as she settled opposite him; the only sound being the engine and the distant roar of the wind. Outside, the night was pitch black and starless; clouds obscuring everything in sight.

“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.

Italy was a whole host of fuck ups. He waved a hand from side to side and it ached from the movement. There were bandages on his cuts and bruises littering his skin.

“Vanko?”

Tony shrugged. “He’s locked up now. He didn’t have much to say to me.”

“His tech was pretty… you know. High tech.”

Tony nodded. “Rudimentary compared to the suit, but yeah. Better than most people could manage.”

She hummed and Tony watched her peer out the window. The black just kept extending down; a deep, endless ocean stretched out below in all directions. No beautiful, twinkling lights of sleeping cities – just water so dark it merged with the sky itself.

“You know,” she said, eyes staring at the night, “the suit is pretty cool to see in real life.”

He smiled. “Yeah, I know. That was your first time seeing it, right?”

Nodding, Natasha replied, “I want to see how you made it. You always were the smartest person I ever met.”

Tony watched Natasha smile as she looked over, soft and gentle, so different from the paparazzi smile she perfected as a teenager. For a moment, he considered telling her a secret; the one where he was actually dying. The secret that contained all their fears curled up in a ball. Neither of them wanted to be the last Stark left standing, even if she’d already abandoned the name and made him it.

The palladium in the arc reactor was killing him. Not softly, not gently, but through poison that spread through his veins and made him acidic. His body was going to betray him at this rate; it was going to crumble and wither and burn because of the thing keeping him alive.

And there, so far, was no cure. No fix. No rabbit he could pull out of a hat – there was no compound in the world that would make a good substitute for palladium.

So there were two options: die a slow, painful death within the next two months, or find a heart surgeon willing to replace the reactor with a car battery. Tony figured the only one willing to do that had died in Afghanistan.

(“Do you have any family, Stark?”

“I do… I have a sister.”

“Then you’ll return for her, right?”)

He was the smartest person Natasha had ever met but he couldn’t figure out how to save his own life.

“You’ll have to come to the lab some time,” he said, sparing a glance over his shoulder at Pepper and Happy, still sleeping in their seats. “We’ll figure out an excuse – Pepper wants to keep you for herself.”

Natasha tapped her fingernails on the arm rest. “Think you’d make me a suit?”

Tony scoffed. “In your dreams.”

*

It was his birthday and he was dying.

Natasha roamed about his bedroom, running her hands across the clothes in his closest, her fingers across all the expensive watches in the drawer. He remembered her doing this when they were young; she’d always had an expensive taste, a good eye for pretty things. While he’d owned a lot of slouchy clothes – especially after meeting Rhodey, who’d introduced him to the wild concept of oversized hoodies – he also owned eclectic, outlandish and occasionally, downright stylish clothes for galas, balls and parties.

“Which one are you going to wear?” she asked, eyeing the watches he’d set aside in a mahogany box.

Tony tore his eyes away from the mirror, where they rested on the arc reactor in his chest. “Pick one for me.”

She quirked a smile as he buttoned up his shirt, and he settled into a chair as she chose the watch and made two martinis. He considered just saying it: _Nat, I’m dying._ The words were right there, but he couldn’t reach them. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her, to see her reaction – the light dying in her eyes, the way her lips would tilt down.

She handed him his glass and then a watch.

“Good choice,” he said.

“It’s the shiniest one,” she replied, settling on the arm of the chair. “My partner has an eye for shiny things.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, a magpie that one.” She hummed. “Are you sure the timing’s right for this party?”

“You mean—”

“With everything that’s going on? Vanko? Handing over the company? Getting your ass beat—”

“Hey, _I_ beat _Vanko._ Don’t get that mixed up.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure, Mr Stark.”

He pulled a face. “Don’t do that.” He huffed. It was definitely the wrong time for a party – but this might be his _last_ party. He couldn’t just ignore that. “Nat?”

“Mm?”

“What would you do if this was the last party you’d ever have?”

She raised her eyebrows and took a sip of her drink. “I’d do whatever the hell I wanted,” she decided.

*

He peed in his suit, got fucking _wasted_ , and fought his best friend.

He destroyed his house in the process.

*

In a donut shop, Nick Fury sitting across from him, and his sister standing beside their table in a black catsuit: “You’re fired.”

“Mm, no I’m not.”

“ _This_ is the secret organisation you’ve been keeping from me? SHIELD?”

Natasha shrugged as she settled in opposite him. “It’s a _secret_ organisation, Tony. What do you expect me to do? Go on the Ellen Show and tell the world about it?”

Tony levelled Fury with a hard look. “You hired my _sister_ to spy on me.”

“She was the only one willing to do it.”

*

She’d already known he was dying. Maybe Tony was getting worse at reading her, or she was becoming harder to read, but she’d known the whole time, and she’d been watching him deteriorate. Tony didn’t know what was harder – being the one dying and struggling to tell their sibling, or knowing their sibling was dying and not being allowed to say so.

Nat had injected him with something to stave off the symptoms of the poisoning, but it wouldn’t last forever. He read his father’s old journals and watched the old videos until he’d had enough and visited Pepper’s office.

He took strawberries with him. Natasha, at the door before he went in, took the box from his hands.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

“She’s allergic to strawberries,” she replied.

Tony blinked. “Shit, seriously?”

Natasha rolled her lip and nodded. “You’re helpless. She’s mad at you. That party was a wreck—”

“—You told me to do whatever the hell—”

“—When you go in there, you deliver the best apology of your life. Mean it.” She looked him up and down and popped a strawberry into her mouth. “These are good. Mind if I keep them?”

He blinked at her and walked into Pepper’s office.

*

“I call it _Badassium_ ,” he said on the phone.

“I call it a miracle,” Natasha replied. “So it works?”

“It works.”

“You’re not dying.”

“I’m not dying.”

He heard her satisfied sigh of relief. “So it won’t kill you to attend the board meeting next Tuesday—”

“Wait, Nat—”

“—and there’s a few documents Miss Potts needs signing—”

“This isn’t—”

“—and Miss Potts and I were talking about the annual fireman’s charity ball—”

“I signed over—”

“—and about the ways maybe it could raise more money in future—”

“I’m blacking out—”

“—and the ways you could participate—”

“Nat, I’m, I’m dying—”

“—Oh! And there’s like six meetings in the books with R&D—”

“I can’t breathe—”

“—they want to talk to you about arc reactor technology and—”

“Badassium… is… lethal…”

“—the medical technology they’re currently developing—”

“Remember… Me…”

*

The Stark Expo had been a pet project of Howard’s, and Tony had wanted one all year round. So far, it was going great. Every event was packed, people came from all over the country to watch talks and visit the stands, and even Pepper would admit that they were getting great press, even if she _had_ protested about the length at the start.

Tony likened the year-long Stark Expo to Emperor Titus’ hundred days of games in the Coliseum – except he wasn’t planning on anyone dying.

Vanko had other ideas, and that was how he found himself flying around Flushing, of all places, out in Queens, with twenty drones on his tail. After briefly saving a child in an Iron Man mask (“Nice work, kid”), Natasha’s face appeared on his set up as she rebooted Rhodey’s hijacked suit.

“Well done with the Badassium,” she noted, as Rhodey stood up in his ( _stolen_ ) suit. “I’m reading significantly higher output and your vitals all look promising.”

“That’s good,” he said. “I feel less like I’m dying.”

“You’re _dying?!_ ” Pepper’s voice cried over the call. Tony’s eyes widened and he glared at Nat, who shrugged, looking unrepentant.

“Well, not anymore,” Tony replied. “I _was_ , but I’m good now. All good—”

“You were dying and you didn’t tell me?!”

He glared at Nat’s image. “This is your fault.”

“I take zero responsibility for this. You have twelve bogies incoming. Kick some ass or step aside and let the professionals do it, Iron Man.”

*

They stood in the destroyed living room of the mansion, Pepper tapping at her phone as they waited.

“I can’t wait here forever,” she said. “I’ve got—”

“I know, I know,” Tony replied. “Just a little longer.” She eyed him and he went for a smile. “It’s important.”

“Important.”

Tony nodded and kissed her quickly, because he got to do that now. They were _dating_ now. The disastrous Stark Expo had somehow ended in them _dating_ and _kissing_ and _Rhodey stealing his suit (again)_.

Footsteps sounded across the room, and he glanced over to see Nat in jeans and a leather jacket. Pepper blinked in confusion.

“You’re late,” he said.

“I’m never late,” Natasha replied, prim. “A lady arrives exactly when she means to, not a minute early, nor a minute late.” She cracked a smile. “Mom taught me that one.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Anyway,” he looked to Pepper, “I wanted to introduce you.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I know Natalie. _I_ introduced _you,_ remember?” She rapped her knuckles against his forehead. “Did you get hit on the head one too many times by those drones?”

“Just listen, okay? This is super important. Like, so incredibly important that only a few people know about it. And now one of them will be you.”

Pepper lowered her hand and looked between the two. “What’s going on?”

“Pepper,” Tony said slowly, “I’d like you to meet my sister, Natasha.” His girlfriend stared. “She works for SHIELD – like that Coulson guy, remember? She was basically spying on me because of my superhero activities and that brief _dying_ thing that was going on, and that’s why she was lying about her identity.”

“…And you knew the whole time.”

“Some of it, yeah.”

“And she’s like, a super-secret agent, not a notary from legal.”

“Yes.”

Pepper blinked, then groaned. “If she’s not a notary then the transfer of the company _ISN’T LEGAL, TONY—_ ”

*

“ _Iron Man yes, Tony Stark no?_ ” he asked down the phone. Nat was already gone again, off on another assignment. She never stayed anywhere too long. “Is it that whole _textbook narcissist_ thing Rhodey thinks I have going on?”

Natasha scoffed. “No. I think you care a lot about other people, actually. Sometimes yourself more often, but not usually. Highly empathetic, in fact, I’d say.”

“Then why’d you kick me out of the super-secret boy band before I even got in?”

“For purely selfish reasons,” she replied. “I don’t want my big brother to get killed, so I cheated and wrote you a bad review.”

“I’m coming after you, you know. Gonna kick your ass.”

He could hear the smirk in her voice when she said, “I’d like to see you try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk what a notary is, please don't tell me
> 
> talk to me in the comments! the more validation i get the more i write and the quicker you'll get the next chapter!! thank u for reading!


	4. aliens in new york

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been like 4 days and i know i was like, daily updates! and i also know i said multiple times on tumblr that it would be out the next day and then just,,,,,, did not post it. however, i do not care and here it is

**2023**

Tony didn’t know how he didn’t notice – but Nebula wasn’t Nebula. She remained quiet for a few days, scoping out the lay of the land, constantly pulled away from the hangar where the quantum machine had been built, and then two days after Natasha’s death, the day after the funeral, she brought the Thanos of the past into the present.

_Natasha would’ve noticed,_ he thought, some time after the stones had been put into the gauntlet, and Bruce had snapped his fingers, and the compound had been bombed. _Natasha would’ve known._

But Natasha wasn’t there, because Natasha was dead.

So they picked themselves back up, clambered through the rubble of the compound, and launched into another battle against the titan himself.

**2012**

It was dark in Germany when Tony hacked into the quinjet’s speakers and selected AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill” to play during his dramatic entrance.

“Hey, Agent Romanoff,” he said through the comms he also totally hacked. “Did you miss me?”

“Like a rash,” Nat replied as he burst onto the scene.

*

Tony stared at Clint Barton’s photo on the holoscreen. He wasn’t anything special to look at, not burly with lots of tattoos and scars like Tony had always imagined when he thought of Natasha’s elusive _partner_ – but this was the man who’d given her a second chance and pulled her back to the good side, as well as back to Tony.

She entered the lab he was sharing with Bruce Banner on the helicarrier and moved to his side, cocking her head at the image.

“I thought he’d be scarier,” Tony said.

“Mm, he is if you’re scared of arrows to the heart.”

Tony glanced over; she’d cut her hair short since the last time he saw her, and there was a tiny silver arrow charm on her necklace, sitting at the hollow of her throat. They’d once worn matching rings that their parents had given them one Christmas, but they were gaudy and large and neither had felt sentimental enough to wear them on the 26th.

“We’ll find him,” he promised her, quiet.

“I know,” she replied. “I’m planning on it.”

*

Steve frowned, looking between the two of them. Tony supposed there was some familiarity in the way he and Nat stood around each other while also pretending not to be related.

“Do you two know each other?” he asked.

Tony got there first. “She botched the transfer of CEO title for my company last year, and spied on me when I was dying, yeah.”

She coughed. “ _Saved_ your life when you were dying, thank you very much.”

Tony quirked an eyebrow. “I’m sorry, did _you_ rediscover a brand-new element to save my life? ‘Cause I could’ve sworn that was me.”

“Mm. And who rebooted Rhodey’s suit and stopped him from killing you?”

Tony blinked. “Where _is_ Rhodey? Did he not make the cut to our uber-special dance crew?”

Natasha shrugged. “Colonel Rhodes was busy. We asked and he said no.”

Steve sighed. “We could’ve said _no_ to this?”

*

When the Hulk was unleashed on the helicarrier, Tony’s heart stopped beating.

He’d wanted to see the infamous green rage monster himself, sure, but _this?_ No, thank you.

“Nat? Romanoff? Can you hear me?” He was currently trying to sort out the debris in the turbine so the helicarrier would stop falling, but he could hear the Hulk’s roaring on the comms and—

Nat had confirmed eyes on Bruce Banner’s alter ego before going silent.

“She’ll be okay,” Steve said in his ear. _You can’t know that,_ Tony wanted to respond – but he didn’t. He had to fix the turbine and then he had to find his sister and _then_ he had to stop a Hulk.

He called out for Steve to flip the receivers and start the turbine back up.

*

Tony fixed up the helmet and tried to repair some of the damage to the suit in the few minutes they had before they dropped into New York. Loki had escaped confinement, he had the tesseract, and, supposedly, the city was swarming with aliens _._

Tony had just wanted to spend the weekend with Pepper and maybe gloat a little about Stark Tower being totally off the grid. He just wanted to celebrate the good things in his life, but apparently this whole _Avenger_ thing was taking precedent.

“Funny,” he muttered, looking out the helicarrier window at New York. “I thought I wasn’t recommended for the team.”

Natasha’s eyes flitted over and she shrugged. “I suppose Fury thought I was biased.”

“You’ve changed your mind, right?”

“No, I’d still prefer you weren’t here.”

Tony shook his head. “No, not that. I meant about aliens.”

She furrowed her brows in confusion. “Aliens?”

“1991. Our parents’ funeral. You thought aliens didn’t exist. You’ve changed your mind now, right?” He gestured to the city; to the nebulous blue wormhole directly above his tower.

“Oh, Tony,” she said, shaking her head. “I changed my mind about aliens years ago.” She swivelled on one foot to walk away and he frowned after her.

“Is that so?”

“I read some classified files I shouldn’t have,” she called over her shoulder. “After that I had no choice but to believe.”

*

As Tony soared his way to certain death, he thought about a lot of things.

First: Natasha’s first ballet recital after she moved in. She had the solo, in the middle of the performance, and she was the smallest, most elegant thing he’d ever seen. She said her old ballet teacher was much stricter than her new one, and Howard went out and got her one that would stomp her feet and yell until the cows came home so Nat could feel challenged again like she wanted.

Second: the way the stars in this portion of the universe were different to the ones he was used to. These were not familiar constellations, these were riotous and brash, making illegible scrawls across the sky.

Third: Pepper, somewhere below him, somewhere in another galaxy, somewhere back on Earth because that is certainly where he was _not_ now. Unknowing where he was, not picking up her phone, not hearing his last words, last thoughts, last breaths, because this was _it._ He wasn’t going to survive sending a nuke into a wormhole, and the oxygen was getting real thin out in the void of space.

Fourth: the concept of nothing and how it could exist as an object of its own out here in the dark. How he was a part of the nothing. How he would float, forever, in tiny charred fragments, burning with nuclear radiation as a tangible part of the lack of existence.

Fifth: how Pepper and Nat would hold hands at his funeral; how Rhodey might stand by their sides, a comforting arm around their shoulders. How Happy would try not to cry but would break down when he was alone anyway. How he would be the first dead Avenger, gone on their very first mission; and the others would keep fighting without him, vaguely remembering a time when there was a man in a tin can who fought by their sides. Maybe the world would come out for the funeral like they had for his parents, and maybe they’d take photos of his few friends as they travelled to the wake. And maybe they’d ask why his sister didn’t come out of hiding for the event, not realising she was right there in front of him, denying the Stark name, but never denying Tony.

*

And then he didn’t die.

*

Tony had never tried shawarma before. It was okay, he guessed.

Nat sat opposite him, bruised, bloodied and very much alive. She met his eye a lot as they ate, as if she was watching him and he kept catching her out. As if she was just checking to make sure he was still there, too.

*

Sometime after arguing with SHIELD and Pierce, but before Thor took Loki and the tesseract back to his magical alien planet, Tony settled on the front steps of Stark Tower beside the archer formally known as Hawkeye.

“Clint Barton,” he said, sitting with a huff.

“Tony Stark.”

“You’re, uh, pretty handy with that bow and arrow.”

Clint nodded. “It’s kind of my shtick. Not sure how it’s supposed to hold up against a literal _god_ , though.”

Tony nodded. “I asked how old he was.”

“Yeah?”

“One thousand-five hundred years old.”

Clint looked over, eyes wide. “You’re shitting me.”

Tony shook his head. “He was around when the Byzantine Empire was still new.”

The two of them fell silent, watching the SHIELD agents roam the area around the tower, the wormhole machine broken down into parts they carried towards tank-like trucks. They held guns and alien tech, and some were keeping the few reporters and civilians back with yellow police tape and short, clipped sentences.

This, Tony figured, was Nat’s world, not his. His world looked like the penthouse before it was destroyed, looked like the tower’s lab, again, before it was made into ruins. His world looked very different from Nat’s, and now, he assumed, Clint’s.

_Agent Barton,_ Nat had referred to him as. Her partner. Tony studied him out of the corner of his eye; light hair, hearing aids, a bandage stuck across the bridge of his nose and another at his temple. There were laugh lines by his eyes, though, and a small symbol tattooed on the inside of his elbow – the one that Nat wore on her catsuit; two triangles, points touching, like an egg timer full of sand that could tilt either way.

Clint let out a long breath. “I won’t tell anyone about you two,” he said, quiet.

“What?”

“How the two of you know each other. I’m not—I’m a spy, Stark, I can keep a secret.”

“She told you?” _Of course she told him. He’s her partner._

He waved his hand from side to side, palm down. “She told me, I read her file, it was totally consensual, it was kind of shady. Not sure. But she knows that I know and she’s fine by it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s our little secret.”

“Do I get to know a secret about you in exchange?”

Clint smiled something secretive. Really, it was like he was ticking through every secret he had, and going, _yeah, no, I’m not giving him shit._ Tony caught him rubbing his thumb over the tattoo before he smiled over.

“What kind of spy would I be if I just _told_ you my secrets?”

“A friendly one?”

Clint laughed. “All in good time, Stark. I’m sure the world will need the Avengers and a dude with a bow and arrow again someday. Maybe you’ll find out then.”

**2013**

Tony was at least forty-five percent offended that he was publicly _dead_ and none of the Avengers had called. Not a single one. Sure, Thor was off-world, but the others? Steve Rogers struck Tony as a man who’d read the newspaper every morning while drinking tea and wearing those uncomfortable brown slacks he’d worn before climbing into a red, white and blue spangly suit back on the helicarrier. Bruce Banner was _definitely_ the type of person who kept up with the news, especially the all-important _IRON MAN DEAD_ kind of stories that would grace the front page. He couldn’t imagine Clint Barton reading a paper or watching the six-o-clock news, but that man was a spy, he traded in information – likely he knew Tony was ‘dead’ before he knew it himself.

And Natasha?

Tony was _eighty-five_ percent offended that she hadn’t called.

He was her big brother for Christ’s sake! He practically _raised_ her! (No, that was a lie, but he _did_ sneak the broccoli off her plate at dinner time and try his best in the Get Natasha a Puppy campaign of ’86.)

Rather, he had no calls from his friends waiting on his suit when the small child whose house he broke into rebooted it, and not even a phone call from _Rhodey._ Of all people! His best friend! James Rhodes hadn’t even left a tearful voicemail about his unfortunate demise that was filmed live for the whole world to see.

He did, however, have an upset voicemail from one Roberta Rhodes, whom he called back immediately on the shitty flip phone Harley found for him. He apologised profusely for making her believe he was dead, agreed to visit for Christmas dinner on the 27th, _and_ promised to attend Lila’s daughter’s gymnastics competition while he was at it.

Harley, whom Tony assumed was asleep on the ragged sofa in the garage, raised his eyebrows at him. “She played you like a fiddle.”

Tony glared lightly at the kid. “Go back to bed. I’m trying build a bomb.”

“Out of a Christmas bauble?”

“Yes, out of a Christmas bauble. Now, _sleep._ ”

“Sure thing, Tony.” Harley yawned. “Just don’t blow up the garage. Ma would take away my allowance if I let the garage get blown up.”

*

“You are shitting me,” Tony said, his phone to his ear. Opposite him in the private jet, Pepper was curled up in her seat, her hair braided back and her skin still a little smudged and blackened from the fire. She got as much of it off as she could with wipes, but there was only so much she could do after the whole traumatic event on the oil rig.

“What? No _hello?_ ” Tony could hear the amusement in Natasha’s voice. There also seemed to be a television playing in the background; the familiar drawl of the morning news anchor.

“I’ve been assumed dead for two days and this is the first phone call I get from you?”

“To be fair, if you’re dead, you’re not going to be picking up the phone.”

“Nat—”

“I was busy.”

“Too busy to mourn your dead brother?”

She hummed. “You know you’re not actually dead, right?”

“But I was _assumed dead!_ The whole world was talking about it! My mansion got bombed!”

“I know, I was saddened to hear,” she sighed. “I never got to see that lab of yours. Maybe I’ll see the next one? I haven’t seen the bots in years.”

“The bots don’t want to see you. I don’t even know if they’re in the ocean or not.”

“Well that’s not good bot care. You should keep a better eye on them when an international terrorist bombs your home.”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time.”

Nat’s voice became pointed and sharp. “But there will be no next time. Right?”

“Right.” They fell quiet for a moment.

“I was off on assignment,” Natasha said at last. “Undercover, didn’t have access to the news. I didn’t even know it happened until twenty minutes ago. We just watched the news—”

“Barton?”

“Yeah. He’s here. I just—I’m sorry I couldn’t help out. You had to take down a terrorist by yourself – and apparently save the President, too. That’s a lot, and we should’ve been there, backing you up. Did Rogers call? Or Fury?”

Tony scoffed. “No. They didn’t. Banner neither. I just… died, and they didn’t even step up to avenge me.” Tony eyed Pepper’s sleeping form as he spoke; she looked so peaceful, not anything like the panic and deadly anger that he’d seen a few hours before. He couldn’t even see any of the Extremis, working through her body. Before Natasha had called he’d been working out the formula to fix that, and his math was littered over napkins across the table. “Rhodey was already working on the Mandarin case when I called, but—”

“I get it. I think we need to do some kind of… team bonding exercise. We’re supposed to have each other’s backs and this week, no one had yours.”

“Pepper did,” Tony whispered. “She… she was the one who dealt with Killian, in the end.”

“Really?”

Tony nodded, but Natasha couldn’t see that. “She has something called Extremis in her. It’s advanced healing; a real super soldier serum. I’m going to get it out of her when we get home, keep the formula hidden. It makes human bombs and we don’t need anyone getting their hands on that.”

Natasha sighed, her voice quiet. “Probably for the best. Hey, Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“For the record, if I had known—”

“I know.”

“You sure?”

Tony cracked a smile. “ _Yes._ I’m sure. I know you would’ve come to help me. I know you, dummy.”

“Okay. Okay. Good.” She went quiet, and Tony listened to her breathe like he’d done a thousand times before. Tony knew people cared about him, even if they hadn’t jumped at the opportunity to show him this time. But he also knew that even if the whole world turned against Tony Stark, Natasha would still come out to bat for him. She just couldn’t this time around.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she said at last.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony said, trying to change the mood with the lightness in his voice. “You love me.”

“You know.”

“Han Solo.” He rolled his eyes.

“Hey, I have a question,” Nat said, her voice changing to match his. “If President Ellis was wearing the Iron Patriot armour—”

“War Machine. His name is War Machine.”

“Whatever. If he was wearing the armour, why didn’t he just… fly out of there? All he had to do was instruct the suit, right? Like, he could’ve saved himself with one flick of his wrist.”

Tony blinked. “Oh, my God.” He heard laughter down the line, more like Clint’s than Nat’s. “Oh, my _God._ You’re right.”

“I’m right!”

“The President could’ve saved himself!” He laughed, and it felt good. It felt really good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the hawkeye 2012 comic run is the true hawkeye and i will only write my boy clint barton deaf, a human dumpster and covered in bandages thank you very much
> 
> next chapter will happen when it happens i make zero promises this time


	5. team bonding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this has an avengers 2012 fan fic mood to it  
> you know, the kind where clint lives in the vents and thor eats all the poptarts. but two years and whole lot of trauma later
> 
> also, first spiderling spotting

**2023**

Tony thought it was more important to get the infinity stones _away_ from the battle field, than to play football with the gauntlet and try and send them back to the past. As long as they were around, they were dangerous. But, like normal, no one listened to him, so instead they were thrown around, passed from one person to another, in an attempt to reach Scott Lang’s shitty van.

Half way through, he saw the kid.

The breath left his lungs, as Peter landed before him amongst the rubble and offered him a hand up.

“Oh, my God,” Peter said, launching immediately into a long story about the alien planet he’d woken up on. “I was looking around, like _, where’s Mr Stark?_ And then that wizard guy with the cloak started doing that yellow circle thing with his hands, like, _Mr Stark needs us!_ _Come on!_ And he makes a portal and tells us literally nothing and—”

Tony pulled Peter in for a hug, the crushing embrace kind where he could do nothing but hold on tight.

“What are you doing?” Peter asked, before relaxing into Tony. “Oh… this is nice.”

Tony had just lost one family member; he couldn’t afford to lose Peter again, too. There was so much he wanted to tell the kid – about Morgan, about the house, about the suit he made for Pepper. His family had left a few hours before Thanos arrived and he’d never been more thankful for it – Tony wouldn’t be standing right now if he thought they were dead, too.

He pressed a kiss into Peter’s cheek before pulling back. Half of him was tempted to send Peter home, even if the kid would argue back. He felt a little like Nat, some twelve years ago, looking at a person he cared so much about and wanting to say, _Spiderman yes, Peter Parker no_ , just to keep him from the danger.

Instead, he took a deep breath. “Keep moving,” he said. “Don’t get stuck anywhere out there for too long, and yell if you need back up.”

Peter nodded. “Got it.”

Tony placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be a martyr, okay?” _You’ve already done that once._ “If it looks hairy, get out of there.”

Peter must’ve seen the loss in Tony’s eyes, or heard the sincerity in his voice, because he swallowed and nodded, face serious. “I promise, Mr Stark.” He held up his pinky finger, and Tony looked at it, brows furrowing at the absurdity of the moment.

Natasha used to make pinky promises, too, he remembered as he curled his little finger around Peter’s. The action made the kid smile, and then he was off, leaping back into the fray, and Tony was left comparing Peter’s smile to Natasha’s when she was his age.

**2014**

“Are we… bonding as a team right now?” Clint asked the group as they stood in the training room of the tower. The building had been entirely refurbished since 2012, and each Avenger had their own floor to live on, as well as the common floor and training one.

The idea of team bonding had been proposed by Natasha but said in such a way that Steve Rogers believed it to be his idea, so she wouldn’t get the blame when it inevitably failed.

“I don’t feel the bond,” Tony said, flapping his arms about. They ached like nobody’s business, and he’d lost every fight he’d participated in except against Bruce. Everyone beat Bruce.

“What, do we need trust falls or something?” the man himself asked, heaving on the floor. His entire t-shirt was drenched in sweat, and it was abundantly clear that Hulk was the one with any athletic ability out of the two of them.

“Maybe exercise was the wrong way to do this,” Tony suggested.

“But sparring is how all warriors form their bonds,” Thor replied with a smile. He’d been having a great time throwing everyone into walls and kicking all-around butt.

“Maybe for elite warriors, but we—”

“Aren’t we _supposed_ to be elite warriors?” Clint asked. “Like, that’s the whole _Avenger_ gig.”

“I am _not_ ,” Bruce announced, “an elite warrior. I’m not even a regular warrior.”

Steve patted Bruce’s shoulder in a consoling manner before shrugging. “Any other ideas then? We need to work better as a team – New York would’ve probably been a lot smoother if we hadn’t been at each other’s throats ten minutes before.”

This was a dig on just about everyone in the room, really. Steve and Tony had participated in a few heated yelling matches, Bruce had tried to kill Natasha as the Hulk, Thor had then attacked him in retaliation, and Clint had been brainwashed through the entire ordeal and attempted to kill them all.

That was practically the _opposite_ of a trust fall.

“How about pizza,” Natasha said. “I’m starving.”

“Oh, and ice cream,” Clint added. “I want ice cream.”

Tony looked around the group and flapped his arms about again. “Sure. Why not. Anyone up for a movie?”

They helped Bruce up and wandered out of the training room together, towards the elevator, talking over each other about preferred pizza toppings and which movie they should watch.

The group ordered the pizza and ice cream through JARVIS before separating to shower and change and meeting back in the common room just as the security guard brought up the food. Then they spread it out across the coffee table and commandeered the sofas and blankets, talking over the movie they eventually chose.

Tony figured they bonded a lot better as a team that way.

*

“You know,” Tony began mildly, leaning against the railing of the tower balcony beside Natasha, “we’ve all been doing that _bonding_ thing recently, and I realised: you and I haven’t done any solo bonding in quite a while.”

Natasha smirked. “Are you asking if I want to hang out with you?”

“Sure. We could get take out or go out for a change. We could take a drive or visit the park. Just, _something._ ”

Natasha studied him for a moment, and Tony felt the familiar feeling of being weighed; judged, having his motivations teased apart and looked at from every angle. Then she nodded, pushing herself away from the railing.

“Chinese,” she said, “and I want to hang out in your lab.”

Tony cocked an eyebrow. “In my lab?”

She nodded. “I never get to go in there. JARVIS won’t let me.”

He followed her as she headed indoors, the doors opening for them automatically. “What, upset my AI won’t let you snoop around my work?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “Precisely that. Plus, the bots. I miss them. They miss me.”

Tony rolled his eyes and they took the elevator up to his workshop on a different floor than the lab that he and Bruce worked in together. His workshop was a lot messier, a little darker, and cluttered with Iron Man helmets and metal fingers he never attached to the hands. Along the wall, his newest suit designs were displayed in glass cases; there were only three of them, the necessary main design, the newly-created Hulk Buster suit, and a backup in case the first got destroyed.

He really _had_ slowed down since promising Pepper he would. The romantic gesture of destroying all his suits in one fell swoop had been genius until they realised they had to walk all the way back to the city.

There were also arc reactors in small cases on a shelf; his first one Pepper had gifted him, the words _Proof Tony Stark Has a Heart_ around the edge, as well as a few prototypes for more efficient versions. He’d only had the reactors for three years, but they were as much a part of him as the rest of his skin and bone, and he was vividly aware of the loss of them from his body.

Sometimes, when he laid awake at night, unsleeping, unable to see anything but the black of the wormhole and the unforgettable explosion in space, he missed the comforting blue glow, and wondered why he ever got rid of it.

“There you are,” Natasha said, a grin lighting up her face as she approached the bots. DUM-E moved towards her, beeping with excitement and nuzzling her hand the best it could. “Oh, I’ve missed you, too. Tony wouldn’t let me in here so I couldn’t visit.”

He cleared a space on one of the desks, and pulled himself onto it, watching as U and Butterfingers joined the party. Natasha had always had an affinity for the bots, ever since he made them in college. They were his first attempts at Artificial Intelligence – pretty remedial on the _intelligence_ front, with beeping instead of words, but it was always clear to him that they had feelings, that they could decide to be excited, to do what they’re told, to be mischievous and not.

He’d named the first one DUM-E when it was completed and proceeded to immediately knock everything off his desk. He had sighed in a long-suffering way, muttering, “Thanks, dummy,” just like he would to Natasha, anytime she did anything mildly inconvenient.

(“You named him DUM-E?” she’d asked when he brought the bot back in the summer. Nat had scratched at the little etching of his name on the side of his neck.

“Yeah,” Tony replied. “I named him after you.”)

When the Chinese arrived, she joined him on the desk and they ate quietly, the bots beeping and rolling around in the background.

“We’re bonding very well,” she said, her voice overly casual. “But I have a feeling that there’s something you wanted to talk about.”

Tony swallowed his mouthful and looked over. She’d opted for sweats and a loose t-shirt he could’ve sworn was his, her feet covered with fluffy socks he’d never seen before. Tony wondered, briefly, when they’d become so disjointed that they needed to have times like this to get themselves back on track. He answered, right after, that it was the day of the funeral, when she decided to leave. (The back of his mind, however, whispered that it was the day _he_ left, and she realised she had to look out for herself.)

Now, though, he asked, “What happened to you?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“When you were little. Before you came home with Dad.”

Natasha looked at him, then looked away. “I never told you about it?”

“No, I think I’d remember if you had.”

She nodded, slow, and looked around the workshop. He got the sense she was just avoiding looking at him. Eventually, she said, “I was trained like my father was.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I was supposed to be a spy long before I actually became one. I was learning languages, fighting, espionage—”

“You were a _child._ ”

“Better learnt from a young age,” she replied with a shrug, and then the whole story came tumbling out, as if she’d been waiting twenty years for him to ask. “Ivan Romanova was more of a triple agent than a double – we lived in Russia, he told the US supposed Soviet secrets, and then told the Soviets whatever lies he’d concocted for the States. I lived in a Red Room – they’re all but wiped out, now, but when I was there I was one of thirty girls, all like me.”

Tony’s usually chaotic mind simmered and then emptied at her story. Everything vanished as he considered the woman in front of him and the secrets she’d kept her whole life. She hadn’t even told _him._ Not until now, not until he gathered the courage to ask.

“Ivan was not my father,” she continued, and Tony’s sense of the universe broke just a little bit more. “We were all to call him _Father_ , but he was more like our handler. He was one of the people who raised us, and the week I was in the States was because I was on assignment. I was supposed to steal something, I think. It was all floppy disks and hard copies back then, and no one would take notice of a little girl. But instead, Ivan was murdered by someone in the US who’d figured out his crime, and I, masquerading as his daughter, was suddenly… orphaned.”

“So you just… took the opportunity to leave?”

Natasha shrugged. “Yeah. They considered me gone, unreachable. I became Howard and Maria’s daughter, and the position would’ve been a good one for a spy, I suppose, had the Soviets had a way of reaching me. But they didn’t. And I was just happy to have a roof over my head.”

Tony set the takeaway box on the table in front of him, his appetite gone. “Did you plan on leaving us if you got the chance?”

“Originally, sure,” she said. “But then I liked being a Stark. I liked hanging out with you and having a mother. So I settled in. I never planned on going back after the first few months – I mean, I was _ten._ I didn’t _want_ to be a killer anymore than you would’ve. But eventually, they found me again.”

Tony paused. “One of Dad’s friends offered you that job.”

Natasha nodded. “I don’t think Dad knew he was Soviet, and I didn’t either until I’d already accepted and been sent away to be trained. I thought it was as a regular Intelligence Officer – I could speak multiple languages, I’m intelligent, I didn’t think anything more of it. And then a few weeks into training I meet a Russian woman who I swore I knew.” She sniffed, poking at her noodles with the chopsticks. “She was the woman who taught me ballet in the Room. And it all just… snowballed from there, I guess. And after that I couldn’t come back – not as a Stark, anyway. Do you know what would happen if the world knew that your sister played an assassin for ten years?”

Tony shook his head and Nat mirrored the action. “I’m sorry you went through all that.”

“Don’t be… I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the work sometimes. I wouldn’t still be doing it if I didn’t.”

The bots had stopped beeping and rolling around at some point, powering down during Natasha’s story. Tony had the inexplicable urge to fight every person that took Natasha away from him when they grew up, as well as every person that put her in that position when she was young. For ten years after their parents died, she was practically unreachable, only returning his phone calls when necessary and ignoring every responsibility she used to have as a Stark and as his sister.

Natasha Stark became a fever dream; not forgotten exactly, but confusing and muddled in the public’s minds. She had been around for some eight years before vanishing, out of the limelight, never to be seen again. Investigative reporters had tried, time and time again, to find her, to discover what hidden cottage she lived in now, if she was married with children, if she was living rich or practically homeless, and each one had met the same dead ends.

Because after December 20th, 1991, there was no proof that Natasha Stark existed at all.

“Thanks for telling me the truth,” Tony said, pushing as much sincerity into the words as possible.

Natasha nodded. “I’ve been telling so many lies lately it’s hard to distinguish between them. Feels good to be honest about something for once.”

*

They watched fireworks from the balcony as a team and ate dinner together almost every night. Tony bought games consoles for the common room and they duked it out until the early hours of the morning.

Slowly, they formed something stronger.

It resembled something like a family.

*

It was after two AM and Tony was watching some shitty conspiracy show on cable. His head was propped up on a pillow, feet across Clint’s lap. The archer had a serious case of insomnia, and it wasn’t the first time they’d watched terrible shows through the night until the early morning sun would peek through the panorama windows. But this time, they weren’t alone. This time, Thor was on-world, deciding to stay for a day or so longer than planned after a mission, and Bruce had slept on the plane, so was still awake now.

Steve simply hadn’t gone to bed yet, and Natasha had a guilty pleasure of watching shows about aliens visiting ancient Egypt and faking the moon landing.

So Natasha was wrapped in a blanket on the floor, her head resting back against the sofa cushions, and Thor and Bruce shared the left-hand couch, while Steve stretched out across the right. They were all fairly silent, half asleep, watching a man with no real qualifications talk about the _possibility_ of the Illuminati in today’s leadership, when Bruce spoke.

“Hey, Tony,” he murmured across the quiet of the room.

“Mm?”

“Speaking of conspiracies, and like… if you don’t wanna say, don’t – but did your sister really run off with a super assassin to live in secret? And that’s why no one’s seen her for so long?”

Tony choked out a laugh as Clint snorted from the other end of the sofa. Even Natasha shook her head with a surprised smile.

“Is that what people are saying?” Tony asked. He’d long stopped reading the articles and forums that emerged, trying to find Natasha’s whereabouts.

Tony could barely see Steve’s frown in the light of the television. “You have a sister?”

He hummed. “Sure do.”

“But no one’s seen her for like, twenty years,” Bruce added.

“That’s not true,” Tony replied. “I see her all the time.”

“So she’s alive?” Clint asked, a coy smile on his lips. “Because I read that she was murdered by someone close to the Stark family and they chose not to prosecute to protect the killer.”

“Oh, I remember that one,” Natasha said. “But I heard she changed her name and even her _face_ after Tony stole the company right out from under her when their parents died.”

Steve looked over now, the frown even deeper. “Did you?” he asked.

“What? No!” Tony replied, laughing again. “She didn’t want to take on the company, and she left of her own accord. She might’ve gotten a nose job though, which—frankly, I don’t blame her.” Clint cackled and Natasha barked out a laugh – it certainly wasn’t obvious that the two of them knew the truth before, but it probably was now.

“So, what happened to her?” Bruce asked.

“Yes,” Thor added sleepily. “What happened to the other Stark?”

Tony shrugged as best he could in his position and smiled. “She’s fine. Nothing _happened._ She just decided she didn’t want to be in the public eye.”

Clint grinned. “Are you sure she didn’t join the circus? Because as former carney trash myself—”

“You were in the circus?” Steve asked.

Clint waved a vague hand. “Sure. My brother was, too.”

“ _You_ have a sibling, too? It’s like I don’t even know you guys at all.” Steve rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. The TV droned on, the effects reminiscent of the nineties, rather than two years ago when it was made.

“I have a brother,” Natasha chipped in. “You just never asked.”

“Like you’d tell us if we did,” Bruce replied, making Nat’s lips curl up into a sly smile.

“You know what my _favourite_ theory about Tony’s sister disappearing is?” she asked the room. “The one where she joined Soviet Intelligence, became a spy and an assassin, and then eventually came back to the States to work for SHIELD.”

The room was silent. Steve looked over again. “Tony, what did you say your sister’s name was?”

“I didn’t,” Tony replied with a yawn. “Her name’s Natasha.”

Again, silence, then Bruce lobbed a cushion across the room, hitting Tony in the face. “Seriously?” he cried. “You two are _related_ and you never even brought it up?”

“You never asked!” Tony cried, throwing the pillow back. It hit Thor instead of Bruce, who looked between Nat, Tony and the cushion.

“Natasha is a Stark?” he asked.

Tony looked at his sister and her smile. “Natasha is a Stark,” she confirmed.

Bruce stole the cushion and threw it at her this time, and she chucked it back with deadly accuracy. Then, another pillow hit Natasha, and she whipped around to look at Steve, now sitting up.

“Hey,” he said, throwing another cushion at Tony. “No throwing cushions.”

The battle that ensued was just as lethal as any they had fought together. Clint’s dramatic death at the hands of Thor was as heart wrenching as it was melodramatic; and Bruce proved he didn’t need the other guy to win this kind of fight.

After, when they were all laughing so loud the TV couldn’t hope to be heard, they all crashed back onto the sofas, only this time Natasha wedged herself between Tony and Clint and rested her head on her brother’s shoulder.

“Biologically?” Steve asked, pointing at the two.

Tony shook his head, but Natasha was the one to respond. “No,” she said. “But blood doesn’t mean a thing.”

*

And then Steve moved to Washington DC.

*

The news flooded the internet only a few months after. Terabytes of information on Hydra, on corrupt politicians, on the truth of the matter that was hidden behind curtains and smoke; the cloaks and daggers in the dark of America, in the faces of the people the public were supposed to trust.

And then they turned to Natasha Romanoff. Every cover she ever had was burned in a single click of her own fingers. Every lie she told, every truth she kept hidden. Her existence unravelled before them all; Natasha Romanoff, Natasha Romanova, Natasha Stark.

Tony’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing so he broke it. His email wouldn’t stop pinging so he switched off the computers and put JARVIS on mute. News helicopters circled the tower like they did the helicarrier wreckage in DC. Tony couldn’t go outside, couldn’t speak or breathe or _think._

It was his sister on the chopping block. His sister who was just revealed to be the SHIELD agent and Avenger known as Romanoff. His sister who worked for Russia, who killed and spied and stole, who extorted and abducted and maimed. His sister. His.

All the things she would never say out loud, all the things he hadn’t truly wanted to know, and now there was nowhere to look but the facts, laid out before him in between encrypted files and the truth about two thirds of Congress. A corrupt institution; systemic, from the leaders on top of the mountain to the agents working beneath it. Hydra in SHIELD, Hydra in the government, Hydra in every facet of American life. Hydra, some thought, in the Avengers.

Eventually, Pepper handed him her phone, and said, “If you don’t answer it, I’ll break up with you.”

He placed the phone to his ear and said nothing.

“I should’ve warned you,” Natasha said, “but I didn’t really know I was going to do it until I was standing there, pointing a gun at Director of SHIELD.” Fury was dead, Pierce was a traitor, and Steve’s best friend was back from the dead, supposedly a Hydra-brainwashed assassin.

“You never got into the habit of saying hello at the start of a conversation,” he replied.

“Are you okay?”

Tony swallowed. He couldn’t go outside within the paparazzi swarming him and he’d have to get a new phone, but he was unscathed. There were no dirty little secrets about him in the leak. Nothing other than Hydra buying a few of his weapons in an underhanded deal by one Obadiah Stane – surely this would come back to them eventually, when anyone else read as far as that, and the company was already prepared for that; ready to denounce Stane, after claiming his death to be accidental, and not one at Tony and Pepper’s hands.

The truth about that might unravel, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the truth about Natasha.

“I’m fine. Are _you_ okay?”

“I can’t go undercover anymore,” she replied, “and I’ll probably have to do some damage control about being a Stark – but, yeah. I’m fine. I’ll _be_ fine.”

Tony nodded, remembering belatedly. “And Rogers?”

“Alive, pretty banged up. Winter Soldier gave him a run for his money, but he’ll be okay. Definitely regretting moving to Washington, though.”

“Wasn’t the whole point to work at SHIELD?”

“Hm, yeah. Seems to me like he’s unemployed now. You might just get him back in New York if you’re lucky.”

“And you?”

He heard her sniff. “I can’t work for SHIELD if SHIELD is gone,” she said. “And I can’t go undercover if everyone knows who I am.”

“Does that mean you’re coming back?”

“That remains to be seen.”

“And Barton?”

“What about him?”

“Isn’t he there with you?”

“No?” Tony frowned. “He’s on another mission, but I’m guessing his cover got burned about twenty-four hours ago, too.”

“Did you give him a heads up?”

Nat blew out a breath. “I really should’ve, huh?”

Tony laughed. “Yeah. You really should’ve.”

*

The Capitol Hill meeting was televised a day later.

Natasha sitting at the circular table, poised, elegant, facing men in their suits in front of a room of reporters and flashing cameras. She didn’t flicker, didn’t flinch. Tony expected nothing less.

“Why haven’t we heard yet from Captain Rogers?” the Committee General asked.

“I don’t know what there’s left for him to say,” Natasha replied evenly. “I think the wreck in the middle of the Potomac made his point fairly eloquently.”

“Well, he could explain how this country’s expected to maintain its national security now that he and you have laid waste to our intelligence apparatus.”

“HYDRA was selling you lies, not intelligence.”

Next to him, Pepper said, “She’s better at this than you.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “She has different _goals_ to me. I was there purely to aggravate, not to keep me out of prison.”

They’d missed what someone said, but another man was saying, “…you should know that there are some on this committee who feel, given your service record, both for this country and against it, that you belong in a penitentiary, not mouthing off on Capitol Hill.”

Natasha shook her head, almost smiling at the concept of it. “You’re not gonna put me in a prison. You’re not gonna put any of us in a prison. You know why?”

“Do enlighten us.”

“Because you need us,” she replied. “Yes, the world is a vulnerable place, and yes, we helped make it that way. But we’re also the ones best qualified to defend it. So, if you want to arrest me, arrest me. You’ll know where to find me.”

Tony smiled as Natasha stood and walked out of the meeting, and pointed at the screen. “Now _that’s_ a Stark move.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!!!
> 
> pretty pretty pretty please yell at me in the comments!!!! next chapter will be up in a few days
> 
> ps. you might have noticed that the chapter count has changed from 8 to 9. this is also subject to change


	6. sokovia is falling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooooo boy y'ain't ready
> 
> also this is 5k so it's a longer chapter which makes up for the next one being much shorter

**2023**

Scott’s shitty van blew up.

Over the comms, people swore and yelled and grunted as they were thrown about, as they fought, as they impaled alien beasts on pieces of rubble and the rest of their worn weaponry. Tony wasn’t dressed to fight a Titan; he wasn’t dressed to fight an army like this.

After Thanos, Tony had built the Titan Killer armour with the asshole himself in mind. And now, here he was, and Tony wasn’t wearing it. The nanoparticles in his suit were wearing thin, dispersed and broken in the battle. He couldn’t let this fight drag on much longer or he wouldn’t hope to survive it.

At his back, Pepper battled in her Rescue armour; blue to his red, an elegant suit of pure destruction. Somewhere, the Iron Spider swung through the wreckage, Tony’s suit being notified at the Instant Kill Mode coming online, and a small screen in the corner of his display monitored Peter’s vitals. No way in hell was he losing the kid again.

Because there was the truth, amongst all the bloodshed: Tony wouldn’t survive losing another family member. He could save the world today, save the whole damn universe, and his family would still be broken, still be missing a crucial piece.

The nanoparticles formed a blade, protruding from his knuckles, and he stabbed it into the throat of an alien mutt.

Natasha would’ve kicked all kinds of serious ass in this battle, and everyone knew it.

**2014**

**NATASHA ROMANOFF OR NATASHA STARK?**

_Following the leak of classified information by the Avengers known as Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) and Captain America (Steve Rogers), the truth has come to light about the employment of the SHIELD super spy herself._

_While many Hydra secrets were revealed in the mass leak, some secrets had nothing to do with Hydra, and instead focused on Soviet cells from the twentieth century, as well as the names of many former agents. Natasha Romanoff, known publicly as the only female Avenger, is now under fire on Capitol Hill as her past is laid bare for the world to see._

_Going by names such as Natasha Romanova, Natalie Seymore, Anya Korvich and more, Romanoff’s history as a spy is as far from morally grey as one can get; it’s downright black. Not only did the leak confirm her involvement with the all-encompassing fire at the Russian Children’s Clinical Hospital in Moscow, but also that she assisted with, or possibly carried out, the assassinations on Anton Drakov and the entire Drakov family, including the crime lord’s six-year-old daughter._

_However, many were not surprised by these revelations, as SHIELD, as it has been revealed to the world, has been performing covert operations and black ops worldwide, some even morally on par with Ms Romanoff’s actions from before she enlisted – which, according to the leak, was by the insistence of one Clint Barton A.K.A. Hawkeye._

_More surprising, really, was the single slither of information amongst all the files about Romanoff’s true identity; or at least, the one we always_ thought _was true. That’s right: Natasha Stark._

_The late Howard and Maria Stark adopted a ten-year-old girl by the name of Natasha in 1984 and raised her until their passing. This girl, the adopted sister of Stark Industries owner and superhero Tony Stark, was then raised in the lime light; attending the annual Stark Galas and smiling for the paparazzi whenever present. Natasha Stark was reported to be friendly, well-spoken and highly intelligent, before her disappearance in 1992, mere weeks after her adopted parents’ deaths._

_Though nothing was known about her life before the Starks, it seems a lot can now be learnt about her life after. No reports were filed about her disappearance, leading most to believe that the single Stark left standing, Tony, was aware of her location, though these Hydra files may prove otherwise._

_From 1992 to 2000, Natasha Stark was working with a cell of Soviet spies, and unlikely to have contacted home during this time._

_Now, Natasha Stark has returned to the limelight under her new name as one of the Avengers – but we wonder if she can be trusted. A former Russian spy, a former eighties media darling, and now a former SHIELD agent, the fall of America’s entire Intelligence apparatus with three helicarriers into the Potomac is on her shoulders. Natasha Romanoff has a lot to answer for, and instead of answering, she has simply returned to New York, and likely, her older brother, Iron Man._

_Natasha Romanoff, Tony Stark and the representatives of Stark Industries refused to make a comment when reached out to._

*

Pepper hummed at the board room table, a tablet in her hands and the television monitor showing the news, muted. “We have to do _some_ kind of address,” she said, eyes not leaving her screen. “A statement, press conference – something.”

“Or we could just… not,” Tony suggested, sitting on the other side, tilted back in his chair and feet resting on the table. “It’s no one’s business.”

“It’s _everyone’s_ business. You’re Avengers,” Pepper replied, looking at the two siblings in turn. “And if we do it right, they’ll forget all about… well, you know.”

“The horrifying crimes I committed in my past?” Natasha guessed.

“Yeah. That.”

Tony looked over at his sister and shrugged. “If you wanna, we could do something.”

“I don’t want to do a press conference,” she decided after a beat. “Even if we say no questions, something like that could get out of hand. And a statement is too formal for anyone to pay attention to after ten minutes.”

Tony nodded slowly. “We need something that’ll catch their attention. Your Avenger status is currently the only thing keeping you out of prison – that and your SHIELD work—”

“I’m pretty sure being friends with Captain America’s probably getting me something, too,” Natasha interrupted, musing. “But I get it. We need to give them another reason not to throw me in a supermax prison.”

“Probably Ryker’s,” Pepper said, and then shrugged when the two looked over at her. “I’m just saying. It’ll probably be Ryker’s – unless… are you enhanced at all?”

Natasha paused before interlacing her fingers and stretching, knuckles cracking as she went. “Well, I don’t like to _brag…_ ”

“Are you?” Tony asked.

His sister shrugged, and swung her feet up onto the table, matching him. “A little. Not super soldier level, but enough. It’s just stamina, speed, that kind of thing. Just a little above your everyday human.”

Pepper pursed her lips in thought. “Probably the Raft, then.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. You’d definitely end up in the Raft.”

“I’ve always wanted to break out of that place,” Natasha said after a beat. “Seems like one of those places no one breaks out of. Bet I could.”

Tony sighed. “Let’s not test it. We need a plan. Something to make people _like you_ again. You know, something informal, but where we can control every aspect of it.”

“Jimmy Fallon,” Natasha replied, amused.

“No,” Pepper said, and Tony watched the thought roll around her mind. “I think there’s a better way.”

*

“Is this thing working?” Tony asked, frowning at his phone screen.

Beside him, Natasha snorted, barely in frame. “You’re a tech genius, how don’t you know how to work Instagram Live?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “You think I’ve _ever_ used Instagram Live before? Who do you think I am? A millennial?”

Natasha smirked and took the phone from him, checking her hair in the screen. “We’re definitely live,” she decided after a moment. “See? That’s how many people are watching us.” She titled the screen back towards Tony, and he narrowed his eyes at the number, steadily climbing. He read the comments that started streaming in, quick and capslocked, and then nodded, satisfied.

“Great,” he said. “We’re live.” He then smiled his paparazzi smile and said, “Welcome to the only Instagram Live I’ll ever do. You know who I am, and I bet you know who she is, too, so let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

“We’re gonna answer some questions, so feel free to ask and we’ll pick a few.” Natasha shifted, pulling her legs up onto the cushion of the sofa, and settling in beside Tony. She angled the screen so they both fit in together, and they read the comments that rapidly scrolled up the screen.

“Calm down a little,” Tony muttered. “We can’t read that fast.”

“Speak for yourself,” Natasha replied. “Someone asked if I’m really Natasha Stark.”

“Well that’s a good way to get the ball rolling.”

“Yes,” Nat said. “Moving on.”

Tony snorted, rolling his eyes. “How long have we been related? Uh, going on thirty years now, I think.”

Natasha blinked. “Thirty years _this year_.”

“Oh shit.”

She smiled. “Yeah. I moved in right after your birthday in the summer. So we’ve been siblings for like… _thirty years._ ”

“God, that’s so long. I can’t believe I’ve put up with you for so long. I should get a medal.”

“Hi kettle, I’m pot,” Nat replied. “I think I just saw someone asked who was the better behaved child.”

“Oh, you for sure.” Tony tried to imitate her voice, “I don’t make the same mistake twice, Tony.”

“Should there be more girls in the Avengers?” Natasha read. “Absolutely. Personally, I’d get rid of all the guys – they’re pretty incompetent – and I’d recast the entire team with the best women I know.”

“Hey—”

“So I’d want Deputy Hill, _obviously_ – though I think she’s not really a _Deputy_ now SHIELD doesn’t exist anymore – Agent Carter’s pretty badass – oh! Mockingbird, but I bet you guys don’t know who that is. I’d _definitely_ stick Pepper Potts in an Iron Man suit, I think that’s a _great_ call—”

“I don’t disagree, but—”

“I’m pretty sure I could do just about everything that Cap and Hawkeye can do? And probably faster? I mean, _sure_ , I can’t play Robin Hood and I don’t look as good wearing the American flag, but the rest of it?”

“Hey, Romanoff?” Tony interrupted.

“Hm?”

“Are you trying to get rid of us?”

Natasha shrugged, smiling. “I’m just trying to put together the best possible Avenging team, Anthony—” Tony made a face at his full name “—and as I wrote on the official SHIELD report, I just don’t think you should’ve made the cut.” She winced mockingly as she said the words, and Tony scoffed, snatching his phone from her hand.

“You don’t get to hold this anymore.”

“Poor me.”

“ _Yeah_ , poor you.” The image fumbled around until Tony was front and centre, Nat leaning against his shoulder. “You’re an absolute mockery of the Stark name, you know that?”

Natasha barked out a surprised laugh. “You sound like Dad.”

Tony gasped. “Don’t you _ever_ say that again to me.”

“You. Sound. Like. _Dad._ ”

Tony blinked at her, clearly restraining a smile. “You come into _my house—_ ”

“Penthouse.”

“—and say such _disrespectful things_. That’s it. You’re banned.”

“Banned from what?”

“From my house. And the Avengers. You’re done. Out. Gonzo. It’s a boys club now. We’ve got Captain Spangles, Bird Brain, Green Giant, Shakespeare in the Park, and Iron Man. That’s it. Black Widow whom? I don’t know her. We’ll get a new spider-themed hero to replace you with. And people will go _hey remember when there was a woman in the Avengers?_ And the other people will reply _oh yeah but she was rude to the team captain so she got the boot._ And you know what? In ten years time, people will be like, _Who’s Natasha Romanoff?_ And they’ll just remember you for being Tony Stark’s stinky little sister.”

Natasha cackled throughout his speech, and Tony finally broke and grinned at her as she sunk down into the cushions, a hand pressed over her face. For a moment, Tony just fondly watched her laugh, before he looked back to the screen and started reading through the comments again.

Yeah, this was better than a press conference.

**2015**

In a snow-capped weapons factory in Sokovia: a red flash, and the world, ending right in front of his eyes. The Avengers: bloodied and broken, dead on the ground, and space expanding above them – whatever he’d seen in the wormhole, three years before, coming back and decimating the planet. Decimating his friends. Decimating everyone but him; everyone but Tony Stark.

He couldn’t be the last survivor, he couldn’t he couldn’t he could—

“You didn’t save us,” Steve whispered, eyes glazing over with death as his last breath rattled out from his lungs.

Tony’s eyes searched through the wreckage. Bruce with his chest torn clean open, the Hulk heart shrinking inside his chest, human and no longer beating. Thor, a fucking _god_ , covered in more blood than skin, red rather than the golden ichor he’d read about as a child. Clint, down for the count, no arrows left in his quiver, bullet holes riddling his entire torso. And then—

“Natasha.” His voice was distant, wobbly, echoing in the vastness of the end. “Natasha.” He dropped to his knees and winced as glass sliced through his trousers and into his skin.

His sister’s eyes were open, unblinking. They stared out into nothingness, a lifeless green. One side of her head was drenched in blood, and it puddled beneath her body, wet and fresh and bright red.

“ _Nat,_ ” he whispered, the first tears rolling down his cheeks. Tony’s shaking fingers ran through her hair, pushing it back from her face. As gently as he could, he lifted her into his arms, head resting against his chest, shirt now damp with red. Tony cradled his little sister against his body, and she let him, because she couldn’t not. Because she couldn’t do anything at all.

“Please,” he coughed. “Nat—”

He woke up to a factory and yelling in his ears.

*

“Did you just _flirt_ with Bruce Banner?” Tony asked when Natasha meandered over, a drink held lazily in her hand. The party was in full swing and Tony had almost forgotten how nicely Nat could clean up, with her hair curled and fancy dress on. However, that was entirely forgotten from his mind when he saw her _flirting_ with _Bruce Banner._

She shrugged. “I suppose I did.”

“Bruce Banner.”

“Yes.”

“The man who can turn into a giant green rage monster.”

She matched his deadpan look with one of her own. “Sure. Why not. Wouldn’t you?”

Tony sniffed. “If I wasn’t in a committed relationship, I mean, _sure._ He’s a genius. And nicer than ninety-eight percent of people in a room, always. And easy on the eyes, too—stop distracting me. Why are _you_ flirting with him?”

Nat glanced towards Bruce, who was talking animatedly with Steve across the room, and shrugged. She took a long sip of her drink. “You just listed perfectly understandable reasons to flirt with him.”

Tony narrowed his eyes at her, and she smiled, coy. “I don’t trust you with this.”

“Oh no?”

“I think you’re up to something.”

“Can’t a girl like a boy in this day and age?”

“Sure, they can. Just not you. You don’t like anyone without something to gain from it. I remember your high school boyfriend.”

Natasha’s smile widened. “Alexander. What a sweet boy.”

“Too sweet. You only ever talked to him around your birthday, or Christmas, or Valentine’s Day. Played him along for three years just so you could get presents out of him.”

She shrugged, and stepped away from him, back towards the party. “It’s the middle of summer,” she said. “See? No ulterior motives at all.”

*

Tony fucked up. Tony fucked up _hard._ He had an idea, and it was a _good_ idea, he was pretty sure. But—

It fucked up, it all fucked up.

Ultron was supposed to protect. _A shield around the world_ he said, and now it was running rampant. JARVIS was broken into pieces, the coding exploding and erasing itself too fast for Tony to fix. And Ultron himself had escaped into the internet, to build its bodies somewhere else. To wreak havoc somewhere else.

He wondered if it was true – that the Avengers really were the most dangerous thing for the planet. If _humans_ were the most dangerous things for the planet. And then he looked at what he and Bruce had created; a murder bot dead set on ending the world. Maybe there was some truth to the matter.

*

Then the Hulk attacked Johannesburg.

*

The Hulk Buster armour Tony had built was satisfactory at best. It needed vast improvements to stop that volume of damage again.

In the quinjet after, Natasha met his eye with a knowing look and took a blanket over to Bruce. Tony watched her as she went, the soft smile she gave Banner, offering him headphones and helping him sit.

Whatever interest Natasha had in Bruce, it was new, and Tony wasn’t sure how long it would last. Natasha was more about passion than forever when it came to her romantic relationships, while she was more interested in loyalty than excitement in her friendships. Tony didn’t take Bruce to be an incredibly passionate guy – not when it came to romance anyway.

Whatever this was, Tony didn’t fully buy it.

But she was the only person in the group who could calm the Hulk – the only person who the lullaby would work with – and he trusted her. The Hulk trusted her.

“We need somewhere to lie low,” Steve decided, and Tony pulled his gaze away and looked to Rogers, as _You didn’t save us_ echoed in his ears. “Somewhere Ultron won’t find us. And maybe the government, too.” He spared a look for Bruce in the corner, eyes shut, headphones on.

“I’ve got a place,” Clint said. “It’s a safe house.” He spared a look for Tony, briefly, and said, “I suppose now’s as good a time as any to find out one of my secrets.”

*

In the middle of nowhere, rolling fields extended in all directions; dirt tracks weaving between them for miles until they eventually hit highways. And in the centre of it all, unsuspecting and silent, was a farmhouse.

And inside was Clint Barton’s family.

Tony watched, eyebrows furrowed, as Natasha greeted Clint’s wife and children, as she placed her hand fondly on Laura’s stomach and asked about _little Natasha._

The Bartons were naming a baby after her?

“Natasha,” Laura said, wincing, “is _Nathaniel._ ”

Nat glared at Laura’s stomach. “Traitor.”

It was only later, after Thor had left, that he cornered her in a room where the floor was covered in Lego and the TV was playing a cartoon. To the side, a boy sat on the floor with a one-eyed golden retriever called Lucky, building something and occasionally glancing over to them as they whispered in the corner.

“You knew about all this?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Okay, okay, but— _this_ is Barton’s big secret?”

“He’s a family man.”

“A family— _Nat._ There are small children in this house. And apparently he does DIY.”

“So do you,” Nat replied, light. “Don’t you remember remodelling your Malibu lab?” He sent her a dead-eyed look and she shrugged, glancing around the room. Clint and Laura talked with Steve in the kitchen, and Bruce was sat at the table, staring a hole in the wall. “He’s my best friend,” she said, soft. “Of course I know about his secret family. He knew about mine, remember?”

Tony blew out a breath and nodded, and Nat smiled up at him. “Why don’t you go help Steve with chopping wood? Get all farmsy. Live off the land and all that.”

“What are you gonna do?”

Nat glanced over to the kitchen, where Clint was offering Bruce a change of clothes and a shower. “ _Do_ might be an accurate verb.”

Tony choked as Nat stepped away, reaching out at the last second to tug on her hair. She yelped and shot him a glare which he met with wide eyes. Then she was gone, following Bruce and Clint upstairs.

*

Ultron was building a body and Tony… Tony had an idea.

“We could do it,” he hissed at Bruce, the regeneration cradle, body half built, lying oh-so-close. “We upload JARVIS, we do it _right_ this time.”

“Are you kidding me?” Bruce replied, waving his hands about. “Last time we did this we made a _murder bot_! One that’s still causing us grief! And you want to make another?”

“No! No, I want to do it _right._ I want to fix things. I want to—” _save you all, before I’m the last one left standing._

Somehow, someway, Bruce agreed. Then, the Vision was born. Then, Nat was taken.

*

In the jet on the way to Sokovia, his fingers erratically tapping at the back of the pilot’s seat:

“Jesus, would you give it a break?”

Tony stopped suddenly, looking at Clint. He hadn’t realised he was doing anything at all. He hadn’t realised he was anything but a thoughtless existence, that his actions related to the world at large. He hadn’t realised he was the kind of autonomous being that could form actions that would create reactions.

Clint eyed him for a moment. “She’ll be okay.” Tony blinked. “I know you’re worried—”

“I’m not worried.”

“You’re worried. It’s fine. It’s normal. And she’ll be alright.” He lowered his voice. “Back to flirting with Banner in no time.”

Tony let out a breath. “So you’ve noticed that too, huh?”

Clint shrugged. “I pay attention. Anyway, it’s nice to see her liking someone. And we’ll get her back just fine.”

Tony just stared out the window and tried to become a subconscious being again.

*

Every battle he fought as Iron Man was vastly different from each other, and as much as Tony liked the variety, he wished some were similar, so he would have a reference point when things went tits up.

Like a country, flying.

Like a country, falling.

Like a country, crashing.

*

Tony wanted to build Pepper a house like Clint built for Laura. He wanted to start all over again somewhere quiet and just _be_ for a while. He wanted, desperately, to be the family man, rather than the soldier – because the soldier was always in the line of fire, and the soldier always had to watch people die.

*

The Hulk climbed into a quinjet and vanished.

Clint retired and helped Wanda bury Pietro’s body, and Laura gave birth to Nathaniel Pietro Barton.

Thor left Earth to return home, and Tony sat in the front seat of his vividly orange Audi, not yet wanting to leave the facility. He stared out the front window, at the trees that surrounded the base, at the sky, blue and endless.

The passenger door opened, and Natasha climbed in.

“I saw you sitting out here,” she said. “Steve said you left.”

“I have left.”

“You’re still here.”

“I’ve mostly left.”

They fell quiet for a moment, and Nat shifted in her seat, pulling a leg up onto the chair and turning so she was facing him fully.

“It’s been a tough week,” she said.

“It’s been a tough life.” He paused and shook his head. “I get the feeling that we’re just doing things wrong, sometimes. That we could do it better.”

“That’s what this is about,” Nat replied, nodding to the facility behind them. “Training new Avengers, having a base away from the city. We’re gonna protect the world better from here. And you _know_ you could stay, too.”

“I’ll visit,” he promised. “But it’s just—”

“Not your job to babysit the new Avengers.”

Tony matched Nat’s smile. “Yeah. Something like that. And Pepper’s waiting for me, you know? If I start spending all my time up here she’ll dump me with no hesitation. I’m on thin ice with this superhero stuff as it is.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “She’s kinda pissed that I made a murder bot, a non-murder bot, and then dropped a fucking _country._ ”

“To be fair,” Natasha said, “you didn’t do the last one.”

“No. The murder bot I made did.” Tony shook his head as if to shake out the bad thoughts plaguing it. “Whatever. It’s over now.”

“Yeah. It’s over now.”

Tony studied his sister for a second; the way her lips tilted downwards, and her eyes weren’t the lively green he usually knew them to be. “I’m sorry about your boyfriend,” he said.

Nat scoffed. “He was _not_ —”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. But you liked him, and he’s vanished off the face of the planet.” Tony shrugged. “Hard knock life and all that.”

Natasha shook her head slowly, her eyes shutting. She let out a long, deep breath, before saying, “Can I tell you a secret?”

“Duh.”

“I didn’t like him. You know. Like _that._ ” Tony raised an eyebrow and she curled her lip. “Fury asked me to get close to him.”

“What, like Bruce has missile codes or something?”

“Bruce _is_ the missile,” she replied. “No one else could control the Hulk. He wouldn’t react to the lullaby from anyone else. So, Fury asked me to get close to him, to make him trust me—”

“He already trusted you.”

“To make him _like_ me. _Love me,_ even, possibly. If he lost that, the Hulk could be lost to us, too – and controlling that part of him is vital to… you know, not destroying Johannesburg.”

Tony shut his eyes, pressing his head into the headrest. She was playing with him, just like she did when she was a teenager. Tony wondered if Natasha had ever been in a romantic relationship in her life that didn’t involve her increasingly complex mind games.

“ _No ulterior motives_ ,” he quoted, looking at her again. “You promised.”

“Tony—”

“We’re a _team_ , Nat. You can’t just go and play with people’s feelings—”

“I was _assigned_ —”

“SHIELD is gone,” Tony bit out. “It’s dead in the water. _You_ made sure of that. You don’t answer to Fury, you don’t answer to Hill—”

“I don’t answer to _you,_ either.”

They stared at each other for three long seconds, before Tony shook his head. “I never said you did. I was trying to ask you to show some compassion, though. Maybe some empathy for your fellow man, for your _friend._ Bruce is more than the Hulk; he’s more than a science project or a weapon for Fury to keep under a lock and key. I understand wanting to have a contingency plan – but the lullaby would’ve worked whether you were a friend or something more. He trusted _you._ As his _friend._ ”

The car fell silent and Tony found himself wishing she hadn’t confided in him. It was just another thing to plague his mind with; just another worry mounting on top of the others. Sokovia, Wanda, Bruce’s disappearance and the creation of Ultron, and now _this._ He’d always wanted her to share her secrets with him, but now she was he wished they’d rebuild a few of the walls they’d broken down.

“I have compassion,” Nat said at last. “And empathy—”

“Then you should’ve _shown some._ ”

“I’m an agent, Tony. I’m a spy, and you’ve got to get used to that.”

“I _am_ —”

“No! You’re not. You still think I’m like you, that I’m normal, but I’m not—”

“Nat—”

“Fury asked me to do this because I’m _good_ at what I do. Because I know the importance of containing the Hulk. Because—”

“Because he’s just as unfeeling as you!”

The car went deadly silent. Tony felt like there was acid on his tongue, and when he worked up the nerve to look at his sister, she looked as if she’d been slapped. _Fuck._

“Nat—I didn’t… I didn’t mean—”

“No. Go on. Tell me,” she demanded, her words hard as steel. “Tell me about Natasha Romanoff, bitch with no feelings, no soul, no heart. Go on. I dare you.”

“Nat—”

“I’ll help you out. I’m a cold-hearted snake. I’ll never love anyone. I get off on people’s pain – is that what you meant to say?” Her knuckles were white with tension, her eyes blazing with rage. “Let me tell you something, oh high-and-mighty Tony Stark: if being Bruce’s friend would contain the Hulk, any one of you assholes would’ve managed it already. But you didn’t, because he wouldn’t respond to it. He needed someone to get close to him, and I did that. _I_ found a way to control the other guy. Not you and your douchebag man-brain. Not you with your _friendship_ and buckets of compassion which I apparently do not possess. _Me._ Because if there isn’t someone around to control the Hulk, Johannesburg happens. People _die._ So fucking _excuse me_ if I do what’s necessary to save lives, even if it’s a little too unpalatable for your highly sensitive tastes.”

Nat flung the car door open, and he reached out, grabbing her hand only for her to shake him off.

“Go back to the city,” she hissed. “I’ll be here, running the Avengers and saving _lives._ You do whatever it is you do.”

The door slammed behind her and Tony rushed out of the car, watching her storm off back up the drive.

“Nat!” he called, but she didn’t turn around. “I didn’t mean it like that! Come on! _Nat!_ ”

But his sister didn’t turn around, and Tony didn’t run after her. He didn’t have any words to make the situation better, and if he stayed here much longer he’d missed his dinner reservation with Pepper and make that situation worse, too.

So he watched her go, took a deep breath, and climbed back in the car.

Then he drove back to New York City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: i am fully aware instagram live was invented in 2016, not 2014. i also do not care.
> 
> i do, however, care about comic clint barton and his pizza dog lucky. 
> 
> peterparker-noir was the one who fed me the nat-was-assigned-to-flirt-with-bruce headcanon and it felt so incredibly black widow that i couldn't not write it in
> 
> thank you for reading and following this story, pretty please talk to me in the comments!


	7. double agent

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm back. here's a new chapter. 2 more to go.

**2023**

Keep away got old very fast and stopped working all too soon. Thanos knew the gauntlet was in play; there was nowhere they could take it that would stop the titan from following after. Tony’s heart lurched as the air strike blew the ground to pieces, as Peter, his mask gone and nose bloody, shook and trembled, arms wrapped tightly around the gauntlet.

He couldn’t get close enough to the kid to protect him, he couldn’t take his eyes off the prize; off the ten-foot purple alien that wanted to destroy an entire universe and start it all again. An existence of people who would never know the blood they were born from; would never know the battles that were fought tirelessly to stop the ultimate destruction Thanos would bring.

Thanos had once destroyed the infinity stones because the temptation was too much. Tony would like to destroy the infinity stones because their power was too great. Entire worlds would become barren, the universe that lived on the point of a pin would collapse in on itself, and the air would become so full of ash that the new world people would be finding it between their toes like sand for their entire lives.

Then Thanos got the gauntlet and Tony rushed forward.

**2016**

Tony was thinking about his parents. He’d been doing that a lot since B.A.R.F. was created; a way to create realistic holograms that recreated his memories. Since he’d developed the tech to be a therapeutic tool, he’d been sitting in his workshop far too often rewatching the moments he could never get back.

The day Natasha first moved in with them: _Natasha Romanova. She will be living with us from now on._

The arguments he heard behind closed doors: _He’s got no drive, Maria! We gave him everything and it made him lazy, ignorant—_

The day his parents left for their vacation: _They say sarcasm is a great metric for potential; if that’s true you’ll be a great man someday._

Someday. Someday. Today? Tony wasn’t sure, because it didn’t feel like it. It felt like he was anything but, that he was just making mistakes over and over; and not the same ones, not like Nat had always thought him likely to do – no, these were new kinds of mistakes; mistakes no human had ever had weigh on their shoulders before.

He dropped a country. He failed to catch it. He built a murder bot, gave the Avengers a bigger building to run riot, argued with Nat—

They’d had worse arguments, and they’d had better. Fighting in the car was just one in the long list, and it left a tinge of resentment hanging in the air – one they couldn’t quite get past but wouldn’t acknowledge all the same. Natasha believed Tony thought her insensitive and apathetic, and Tony thought Natasha was only _slightly_ insensitive and apathetic.

And then a woman cornered him in a hallway and blamed the death of her son firmly on him, and he added it to that towering list of mistakes he’d never made before, but was now making far too often, and watched the news as Wanda killed Wakandan humanitarian workers, and the Avengers approached Rumlow in the middle of a market, and Lagos paid the price for his teammates’ insensitivity and indifference.

*

“We’re running unchecked,” he said to the Avengers after shooing Ross out of the room. He’d never convince them of anything if he was still around. “We’re hurting people and not paying for it—”

“We’re saving lives,” Steve corrected. “That’s the mission here.”

“Sure,” Tony agreed. “But if you’ve got civilian causalities at the end of the day, have you really done your job correctly? The Accords aren’t telling us never to act unless allowed, they’re telling us that we’ve got to pay for the damages we create.”

“And we do,” Sam replied. “Every time.”

“No. _I_ pay for the damages. My _foundation_ pays for the damages,” Tony retorted. “You all do nothing. You watch as I lose millions of dollars every time you go out on a mission, because you just _had_ to blow up a building while you were saving the day. And then you put out a paltry apology statement, as if that brings back any of the lives you lost out there—”

“Tony—”

“We are running with zero oversight,” Tony continued, cutting off Steve. “And that freedom has been nice; it’s been good – but it’s clearly not working out. We’re a group of Americans traipsing into other countries with no permission, and then we’re leaving with wreckage in our wake.”

The room was quiet, until: “You’ve already signed, haven’t you?” Steve asked.

“Yes.”

“Without talking to us about it first.”

“I’m talking to you now. I signed because it’s the right thing to do.”

“You _always_ do this,” Steve huffed. “You make decisions for the team and then expect us to just fall in line.”

“I do not—”

“You made Ultron _twice_ without consulting any of us.”

“I consulted Bruce—”

“These documents are going to keep us from actually helping people,” Steve continued. “They’re going—”

“Tony’s right,” Natasha interrupted.

Tony blinked. “Come again? I need to make that my ringtone.”

*

Then: an explosion at the Wakandan Embassy.

Then: Sargent James Barnes was blamed, made into a fugitive, chased by Steve and Sam and the Black Panther.

Then: a clusterfuck of things: Barnes going psycho-soldier, trying to shoot Tony in the face, laying waste to the CIA building and Tony was wearing a Tom Ford suit instead of one made of titanium alloy.

Then: “Are you okay?” Natasha asked, and Tony was listing the reasons why Pepper left him ( _it’s no one’s fault_ ) and it always went: 1. Because Tony was Iron Man, 2. Because Tony could not _stop_ being Iron Man, 3. Because Tony did not _want_ to stop being Iron Man, and Pepper was left to the side, watching him run himself into the ground on missions instead of pushing forward in their relationship and building something beautiful with her.

“Always,” he replied, despite all these things – because Tony Stark had to be okay, or the day would never get saved.

*

“We’re going to cut them off at this airport,” Natasha said, looking at Tony, King T’Challa, Rhodey and Vision. The android had reported Barton having taken Wanda before FRIDAY was back up online, and Tony was boiling inside. He’d kept her in the compound because she was _safe_ there, because everyone was safer _from_ her with her there. The building had everything she could ever possibly need, and as long as she _stayed_ , she would get through the entire event unscathed – but Steve saw that as being a prisoner and broke her out, because of _course_ he did.

Wanda Maximoff was a weapon of mass destruction and not an American citizen – she had no rights here, no leg to stand on. Tony had just been trying to _help._

“They’re likely to go after the quinjet in Hangar Five, so we’re going to stop them before they get there.”

“There’s more of them than there is of us,” Rhodey noted. There were six Avengers against them, now – one more that could throw the odds all out of balance.

Tony blew out a breath. “I’ve got an idea about that.”

*

In the cramped bedroom of a tiny apartment in Queens: “You’re the Spiderling, Crime-Fighting Spider. You’re Spiderboy?”

“Spiderman,” Peter Parker replied quietly, like a sigh.

“Not in that onesie you’re not.”

“It’s not a onesie.” Peter moved away from the wardrobe where he’d flung the suit and stepped across the room to his desk, where all the tech pieces he’d scrounged from the garbage were laid out to be repaired and sold. Tony peered into the wardrobe and pulled out the suit – it was _totally_ a onesie. “I can’t believe this, I was actually having a really good day today, you know, Mr Stark? Didn’t miss my train, this perfectly good DVD player was just sittin’ there, and my algebra test: nailed it.”

“Who else knows? Anybody?” Tony asked, the suit in his hands. It was like sweatpants and a hoodie had been sewn together with a ski mask on top. It was the most budget superhero get up he’d ever seen.

Peter shook his head. “Nobody.”

Somewhere in Tony’s mind, he wondered about that: about a kid getting superpowers and not telling a soul. About the first person to figure it out being Iron Man and coming into his apartment to ask something big from him.

“Not even your unusually attractive aunt?” Tony sat down in the desk chair.

“No? No. No, no. If she knew, she would freak out. And when she freaks out, I freak out.”

A kid, not even being able to tell his aunt. If Pepper hadn’t found out about the armour as soon as she did, Tony probably would’ve lost it, just keeping the secret. And Rhodey – having the support system before he announced his secret to the world was what helped him stop Stane. And this kid had no one?

Even Nat, a child spy who preferred to keep to herself, had thirty other girls to share her experience with.

“You know what I think is really cool? This webbing.” He threw it over and Peter caught it without looking. “The tensile strength is off the charts. Who manufactured it?”

“I did.”

_Oh, he’s smart._ Tony already knew it, really – he’d seen the kid’s grades, but the webbing he’d analysed was something even a genius fifteen-year-old should’ve struggled with. The kid was something special, he decided. And while he wanted to learn all the ins and outs of Spiderman and how everything worked, they had a deadline and a lie to feed his aunt.

“I can’t go to Germany,” Peter said, confusion marring his features.

“Why not?”

“I’ve—I’ve got homework.”

Tony blinked at him. Nat was going to _love_ this kid. “I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just say that to me.”

*

“So this is the kid who stole my gimmick,” Natasha mused as Peter, donned in his new Spider get-up, followed Tony into the helicopter. They’d take the copter to airport, where Cap would likely be arriving any minute. The plan had been drilled into Peter, and the understanding that the kid was to stay back, stay out of danger, and web everyone up was made clear.

The eyes of Spiderman’s suit widened comically. “Oh—oh, Black Widow. Oh, my god, I’m so sorry – I didn’t mean to—”

“She’s messing with you, kid,” Tony said, slapping a hand on Peter’s shoulder. He passed over the headphones, and the kid put them on as the rotors started up. The Iron Man suit flew on autopilot behind the copter, Rhodey and Vision also in tow, as Natasha and Black Panther sat opposite. “Be nice to him. He’s new.”

Nat smirked at the kid and flicked her hair to the side. “You got the plan?”

Tony nodded. “Talk them off the ledge, and only fight as a last resort.”

“And I get Barnes,” T’Challa cut in.

Tony rolled his eyes. “ _Sure._ And you get Barnes. Kid, this is the King of Wakanda.”

“Oh, uh—uh, do I bow?” Peter leaned forward a little, but there was confusion shown in the mask’s features. “I don’t know how to bow in this seat.”

Nat scoffed. “I thought we were being nice to the kid and _not_ giving him a heart attack.”

Tony shrugged, smiling, though he knew his smile hadn’t reached his eyes around Nat in a long while. “Couldn’t help myself.”

*

“Clint’s gonna be down there,” Tony said, low, after T’Challa and Peter climbed out of the helicopter.

“I know.”

“And if you have to fight him?”

“I’ve kicked his ass before, I’ll do it again,” she replied.

“He was brainwashed back then.”

Natasha shook her head and levelled him with a gaze. “I’ll worry about fighting my best friend, you worry about fighting your boyfriend.”

“Cap is not—”

She smirked. “I read trashy gossip magazines and they say otherwise.” Her smile faded when he didn’t match it with his own, and she shook her head, blowing a breath out. “We’ll figure it out. It won’t end in a fight.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“We’re friends,” she said. “I mean… We’re more than that, Tony. The Avengers is a family. _We’re_ a family. We’ll be prepared, in case it does come to blows – but I’m sure we can work it out before it gets to that point.”

*

They could not work it out before it got to that point.

*

The spider-kid was quiet, after. Rhodey was being transported to the nearest hospital, unconscious and unmoving, Steve and Barnes had gotten away and Nat—

No, he didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to think about her loyalty stretching to ridiculous lengths for Steve fucking Rogers, but not for him. About her going against her own beliefs that the Accords were the right thing all for Captain America.

Look, there he was. Thinking about it.

“So what happens now?” Peter asked as they trudged towards the helicopter that had landed to ferry them back towards the city. T’Challa was grumbling and angry – furious, even, that he hadn’t got his man and had been attacked by Natasha – and sat in the copter, already, glaring out the window.

The kid sounded less excited than he had earlier, now law enforcement had arrived and started handcuffing the Avengers. Tony had turned away when they started putting a straightjacket on Wanda.

“You’re gonna stay in Germany until tomorrow evening, then take the plane back,” Tony told him, climbing into the copter first so the kid could have the window seat. “You can do some sight-seeing, whatever you want.” Tony noticed the phone Peter was sliding into the small pocket by his hip – he could’ve sworn the kid had been filming the fight earlier on. “Happy’ll stay at the hotel and travel back with you.”

“And you?” Peter asked.

Tony pulled on the headphones. His left arm was twitching and aching, and from where he sat now he could still see his teammates, arrested and being placed into vehicles. He’d have to work on getting them released – probably to a form of house arrest, best case scenario. He’d have to go after Rogers and Barnes, bring them in or maybe help them out – he wasn’t sure. He’d have to check on Rhodey, talk things out with Nat, make sure Wanda wasn’t locked up like an animal. He’d have to fix things with Pepper. He’d have to see the kid safely home. He’d have to do a thousand things, because everyone who could possibly help him was AWOL or arrested, and he was on his own.

“I don’t know, kid,” he said at last, weariness in his tone. “I have no idea at all.”

*

He went to the hospital where Rhodey was being treated first. He paid out for the best doctors to travel in to help and pressed himself firmly into the squeaky plastic chair to remind him that he couldn’t zone out, that he might be needed at a moment’s notice.

About an hour in, he spotted Natasha, watching quietly from the side lines. Tony shook his head, more to himself than to her, before starting over.

“They said he’ll live,” she told him, quiet. “But he’s gonna have trouble walking. Damage to the spine, I think.”

Tony stared out the window they stood by, silent. His left hand spasmed and he clenched it, tight.

“Vision came with me, so he’s around here somewhere, too,” she continued, her voice turning a little desperate. _Funny,_ Tony thought, _Natasha’s never been desperate in her life._ “And I heard they took everyone else to the Raft. Everyone arrested, I mean. Which—it’s interesting because the Raft is for powered individuals, you know, with abilities, and the only ability Clint has is shooting an arrow with his feet. And Wanda—”

“Stop it,” Tony ground out.

“What?”

“Just stop.” He turned to look at her, how she was entirely unmarred by the whole fight. Her clothes weren’t ruined, he couldn’t see a single bruise, and the only thing to even hint at her having a bad day was that her hair wasn’t as perfect as usual.

Tony’s arm was in a sling, his eye bruised purple, and he could see his reflection in the window – how he looked as if death itself had visited him in his sleep.

“You have to go,” Tony told her. “T’Challa’s on a warpath and you’re in his way.”

“Tony.”

“You attacked the King of Wakanda and aided and abetted wanted fugitives.” His voice was strangely cold. He wondered when his warmth for his sister had started to dwindle – maybe it had been when she faked falling for Banner in order to control his power. Or maybe it had been only that day, when she helped Steve fucking Rogers over her own brother. Maybe their relationship meant nothing to her, after all—

No, not nothing. He knew her. It meant something. It just didn’t mean _enough._ Apparently, she’d pick Steve over him, no matter what they’d been through, no matter what he’d kept secret for her, no matter what he’d do (had done, would continue to do) to keep her safe.

She rolled into Stark Industries six years ago, after years of almost radio silence, so she could spy on him and watch him die. She was a spy; she dealt in mistrust for a living.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” he said, though he was. He really fucking _was._ “You’re a double agent. It’s what you do.” He just never truly thought she’d do it to him.

Natasha was silent and so was he. They stared out the window, stared at each other, tried to blink away the shock and rage that mingled together. _Natasha Romanoff._ She didn’t even use _Stark_ anymore. She still didn’t attend any of the events and galas he and the company threw, despite the world knowing her to be back. And when it came down to it, she couldn’t even keep her word to him.

Tony threw her a bone, deciding it would be the last one he’d ever give her. He couldn’t look her in the eye as he did it, though. “They’re going to come for you next. Get out of here. Don’t come back.”

And then she was gone, and Tony Stark was an only child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading!!! talk to me in the commeennnnntttsssssssssss pls i need them for validation and survival purposes
> 
> next up: homecoming and ???????????? a war???????? that is infinite?????????


	8. broken up like a boy band

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took two weeks to post because i forgot about this fic's existence entirely

**2023**

“I am inevitable.”

Thanos snapped his fingers, and silence fell across the battlefield. But—nothing happened. No one vanished, nothing moved; the wind even paused its blustering to watch the universe die. But it didn’t, and Thanos turned over his hand to stare at the gauntlet, empty of all six infinity stones.

As he did so, Tony lifted his own hand, feeling the rush of energy, of power, course through him, stretching out in tendrils through his veins, reaching every corner of his body. His skin glowed as the stones fitted into place in his makeshift gauntlet, the nanotech crawling towards his hand to hold them up.

The wielder of six infinity stones. The power was too much for one being, Tony knew that. In fact – he knew _everything._ It all came to him in a gasp, in a breath, in a burst; there was life in every atom of the universe, life in every molecule of his being, and he could feel it all. He could feel the crumbling of blistered earth, could feel the beating wings of the soaring Pegasus, could feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on him. Everyone’s hopes on him. Everyone’s futures, resting on his shoulders.

He just had to search, Tony knew, and he would find anything he wanted. The secrets of existence, of eternity, of the afterlife. He would see every moment in history, every moment to come – the next big threat that would take down the universe, the day Morgan got married, the moment the universe ended. He just had to reach out with his mind and look.

And he’d see Peter, and he’d see Ben Parker falling at his nephew’s feet, drowning in the blood in his throat on a fluorescent-lit bodega floor.

And he’d see Pepper, and he’d see the rest of her days, rolling out like a red carpet, lined with successes and soft, gentle sadness.

And he’d see Natasha, and he’d see her beginning to her end, from a rundown darkened living room in Saint Petersburg, to the bottom of the cliff on Vormir, and then he’d see how he could change—

The present rushed over him in a bright white. The here, the now, the mere second that had passed since the infinity stones had settled themselves with their wielder.

He only had one chance, one moment, and then it would be gone.

Tony took a breath, placed his middle finger against his thumb.

“And I… am Iron Man.”

**2016**

To be entirely honest, Tony had kind of ignored Peter after Germany. He was still licking his Steve Rogers-inflicted wounds, and the kid was laying low, sending his reports through Happy, receiving churros from old ladies – it wasn’t like he _needed_ Tony around. The kid was pretty self-sufficient in the whole vigilante department.

So Tony spent his time quitting Iron Man, sort of, again, and desperately trying to win back Pepper, and actively ignoring the texts he got from a blocked number signed _N.S._

And then the kid fell in the Hudson, so Tony fished him out, and followed his lead vaguely on the alien-arms-traffickers and handed the case over to the FBI.

And _then_ the kid split a ferry in two—which. That’s not _easy._

“A _ferry._ In _two,_ ” he insisted to Pepper across the kitchen island at the upstate compound. They were shutting down the tower once and for all, selling it off, and moving all New York Stark-related work to other buildings and the Avengers facility, out of the way of the city.

Pepper smiled into her wine glass. “That’s impressive.”

“No, it’s _ridiculous._ A _ferry,_ Pepper! How do you split an entire boat in half?”

“A lot of effort, I’d imagine.”

“You’d imagine correct!”

She hummed into her glass before stepping around to his side, where he leaned against the counter top. Pepper joined him, pressing her arm into his. “So you took away his suit.”

Tony sighed. “Do you think I was being too harsh on him?”

She paused before shaking her head. “I think he was in over his head. I _think…_ ” she tilted her head up to look at the ceiling for a moment, “that if you’re going to give a kid a high-tech suit like that, you need to follow up on it.”

“Follow up?”

“Train him.”

“I—”

“You kind of left him out there. He wasn’t going to save cats from trees and stop car thieves forever. New York is crawling with batshit crazy criminals, and he was going to run into one eventually. I think he should’ve been taught how to deal with them—”

“I _told_ him I’d handle it,” Tony interrupted. “And I did! I called the FBI—”

“But you didn’t _tell_ him you called the FBI, and maybe to him it sounded like you were blowing him off, telling him he wasn’t good enough to follow this up. You two need some communication there, is all I’m saying. Some training, some mutual trust. That kid was wearing billions of dollars’ worth of tech, and you left him to fend for himself.”

“Are you blaming me for this?”

“No—”

“It sounds like you’re blaming me for this.”

Pepper smiled at him, setting her glass neatly on the counter. “I’m saying that when this all blows over, in a couple weeks, you’re probably going to give the suit back to him. If you do, you should consider how to do things differently next time, so another ferry doesn’t get split in half.”

Tony breathed out a sigh, lowering his head until his forehead pressed against the cold countertop. “You’re right,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’m the adult.”

“You’re the adult.”

“I’ll let him think about what he’s done and then have a chat with him.”

Pepper ran her hand across his shoulders, her fingers rubbing a pattern into his back before they landed gently on his neck. “Mm, I knew you’d see sense.”

Tony laughed. “Only when you hand-feed it to me.”

*

And then the kid crashed Tony’s plane, which told Tony he hadn’t _really_ thought about what he’d done, but instead decided that he needed to do what was right, whether he was equipped in a billion-dollar suit or not. And Tony respected that, as much as the news of a fifteen-year-old crashing his plane terrified him.

Which gave Tony no choice, really. The kid was going to be a hero whether he was protected by Tony’s tech or not.

“I had no choice,” he told Pepper, while she watched him scroll through Peter’s timetable that he’d… uh, _found_ on the Midtown server. “He needs to be mentored.”

“Mentored,” she mused.

“Yes. I’m going to teach him—see, right there. Friday afternoons he has no extracurriculars. He could do some patrolling then swing by for some superhero lessons.”

Pepper tried her hide her smile with her coffee mug. “Superhero lessons.”

“Yeah, you know. Training. Combat, fixing the suit – maybe he could make his web fluid here, instead. I mean, he’s making it in his _classroom_ right now, during class, trying not to get caught.” Tony shrugged. “I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to get taught by Iron Man, right?”

Pepper hummed. “Sure. Thrilled.”

“Stop smiling like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re amused by this whole situation.” He pulled out his phone and typed off a quick text to Peter, telling him the time and place for Friday.

“Maybe I am amused,” she said, before sitting on the arm of his armchair. “Who thought Tony Stark would ever willingly spend time with a teenager.”

“It’s not that I _want_ —” Tony’s phone pinged with a response and he smiled at Peter’s copious exclamation marks. Pepper hummed again and took a long sip of coffee. “Shut up,” Tony mumbled in defeat.

*

It was only after Peter had left on the Sunday morning – because, yes, training had turned into dinner, which had turned into not one sleepover but _two_ , because Tony had wanted to show Peter something in the lab and they’d both gotten carried away – that Tony looked at the neatly lined up texts on his phone. All unanswered, sitting under an unknown number.

_3 months ago, (03:46): Safe. I’m sorry. N.S._

_11 weeks ago, (06:24): Always knew I could break out of that place. N.S._

_1 month ago, (23:12): I know trashy magazines are not to be trusted but is Pepper pregnant? SuperBeat seems to think so. N.S._

_1 month ago, (23:14): Congrats, if that’s the case, by the way. N.S._

_1 month ago, (23:15): You’ll make a great dad. N.S._

_8 days ago, (07:13): Saw the Spiderboy on the news. First plane crash mission is always memorable. N.S._

Tony sighed deeply, locking his phone.

He remembered receiving each one – in the lab late at night, or in the morning when he woke up. She only texted in the hours when the sun was gone or barely rising, but he imagined those to be the hours Natasha was awake, now she was a fugitive.

She’d sent the second text mere minutes after she’d helped Rogers break the incarcerated Avengers out of The Raft. He’d been tempted to respond that it wasn’t the same, breaking other people out than just escaping herself, but he couldn’t bring himself to text back.

Still couldn’t.

Natasha Romanoff – because there was no way she was going by Stark for any reason other than to manipulate him – was a backstabbing double agent. Every move she made was calculated, carefully crafted, and specifically to keep herself at the top of the food chain, out of danger and out of sight. Even speculating over Pepper’s reported (and not true) pregnancy was just to present herself as the loving sister she wanted him to view her as.

It was interesting, then, that she’d kept the same phone for three months to text him with and had texted him immediately after breaking out her friends from The Raft. It gave him the opportunity to track her, to hunt her down, and Tony inwardly seethed at the fact that she knew he _wouldn’t._ Because there was no other reason for her to act that way – Natasha knew Tony wouldn’t turn her in or hand her over.

He was done throwing her bones and yet here he was, turning a blind eye to every message, to the SIM card she clearly wasn’t changing. If he gave himself a few minutes, he could find her. Could find all the Rogue Avengers, as the media took to calling them. But he didn’t.

Because he was her big brother, and he couldn’t do that to his little sister.

**2017**

Months passed the same way. Tony celebrated Christmas with Pepper, New Year with the entire Rhodes clan. He invited Peter up to the compound every weekend and focused his work on nanites during the week. The kid had declined the Avenger offer, but Tony still trained him in case he ever changed his mind.

He bought a penthouse in the city and proposed to Pepper on the balcony, overlooking Central Park. He kept up to date with the news on the Rogue Avengers, stared at the low-quality photos snapped on phones from a distance of people who looked like Rogers and Wilson, or Wanda in her Scarlet Witch get-up. There were rumours of a blonde woman walking beside a man who looked eerily like Cap, and Tony was fairly sure Natasha had dyed her hair and chopped it short, though no one could ever confirm it was her.

Occasionally, someone would refer to Rogers and Tony would stop, he’d freeze, he’d remember Siberia and a shield coming crunching down into his arc reactor. He’d remember Natasha choosing Steve over him, and Steve choosing Barnes, too – because everyone had someone they’d choose before Tony, and that was just the way it went.

And he’d receive a text once every month, like clockwork.

And he’d ignore every single one.

*

“AC/DC, “Back in Black”,” Tony said, tapping his wrench against the worktop. “One of the most iconic tracks of the 80s – I think I was nine when it came out.”

Peter nodded, not looking up from the beakers spread out before him. Something was bubbling away as Peter stirred rapidly, and he was counting the seconds before abruptly stopping and standing back. The mixture frothed over the top of the beaker and pooled in the tray beneath it.

“Are you even listening?” Tony asked, and Peter blinked before glancing over. “I’m teaching you important music history right now.”

“Hm? Oh, yeah. I was listening.” Peter nodded rigorously, before turning back to his web fluid. The notes he followed were spread out across the work top, with the words _FACILITY VERSION_ at the top in pink highlighter. Tony assumed that was to mark them separate from the web fluid he’d make at school with slightly different materials.

“What did I say then?”

“Uh. You were talking about this song,” Peter replied. “Led Zeppelin, right? I love him.”

Tony short-circuited for a moment, opening his mouth and shutting it again. Then he hissed, “ _Led Zeppelin?_ Parker! This is AC/DC! God! Were you raised by animals with no music comprehension? _Led Zeppelin?_ Insanity.”

Peter snorted and turned back to his work, scraping the web fluid from the tray so he could place it in another beaker. He’d then transfer it into the fluid cannisters he made for his web shooters, and probably begin the whole process all over again.

Tony shook his head and turned around, focusing again on his nanite work. He was pretty close, actually. There were mock designs for a housing unit he could attach to his chest, and the nanobots would then be transportable. If he could have them with him at all times, he wouldn’t need the data chips he’d imbedded under his skin to call the suit and could have them removed – he’d always have an Iron Man suit nearby.

With the music on high and his work so close to completion, Tony became absorbed in the details, in the mathematics and tiny pieces of technology that he’d been playing with for a decade. Then the music suddenly shut off and Peter announced, “I’m hungry.”

“Hi Hungry, I’m Tony, nice to meet you.” Peter sighed, and Tony tore himself away from his work. “You want pizza? I can get FRIDAY to order for us.”

Peter hummed for a moment. “Chinese?”

“Sure thing. FRI?”

“Your usual order has been placed,” FRIDAY confirmed from on high.

Tony nodded once and span his stool back to his work when Peter continued, “Your phone went off, by the way.”

“Hm? FRI?”

“You have one new text message. From UNKNOWN: _Saw you and Spiderboy on the news taking down an MGH ring. Might have a lead on the supplier if you want it. N.S._ ”

Tony sighed deep, through his nose. Peter had been on the tail of a drug ring that sold Mutant Growth Hormone – MGH – pills that could give the user mutant abilities for a short time. Some strands improved speed and strength, while others gave laser eyes or sonar vision. But one common trait was the aggression; everyone that took them became enraged and violent. When Peter had discovered the extent of the ring he’d been following, he’d asked Tony to help out – it wasn’t as big as alien weapons, and from Peter’s research only a few of the thugs took the pills, so it was a fairly easy night’s work. They just hadn’t managed to find out who the supplier was; everyone they took down was a distributor and nothing more.

And now this.

“Whoa, who was that from?” Peter asked, staring at Tony with wide eyes. “If they have a lead on the supplier—”

“No.”

“No? Mr Stark, I can’t find _anything_ on the MGH guys. If they know who the supplier is, we’ve got to ask them.”

Peter’s eyes were firm when Tony met them – the kid had quickly lost his hero worship of Tony upon realising him to be merely mortal, and he’d gained the courage early on to stand up to him. “Mr Stark,” he continued, “MGH is _bad_ , you know that. We need all the help we can get.”

“You don’t even know who’s offering the tip,” Tony replied evenly.

“Unless they’re after some sort of nefarious trade, or they’re straight up evil, I don’t think it matters.”

Tony blew out a breath. He rapped his knuckles on the worktop. “Fine.”

“Do _you_ know who they are?”

“Of course I know who they are,” Tony replied. “And they’re not—they’re not _evil._ And they’re probably not going to ask us for a nefarious trade.”

“Then what do they want?”

Tony rattled answers off in his head, trying to find the one that fit Natasha the best: making Tony owe her, wanting the supplier behind bars, proving she’s still Avengers-worthy—but he knew what the truth was, really. “She wants to prove she’s trustworthy. She wants back on my good side.”

Peter frowned, tilting his head to the side. “Did she hurt you or something?”

Tony picked up his phone from the mess on the table. He unlocked it and stared at the newest text message from his sister. “Or something,” he said, before dialling her number.

He turned his back on Peter as it rang through, and then forgot about the kid entirely when she picked up.

“Hi,” she greeted, and his stomach flipped.

“Hi.”

“How are you?”

Tony shut his eyes. “Fine. I suppose. It doesn’t matter, I’m calling about your text.”

“We can’t chat first?”

“No, I don’t—I’m busy, I’ve only got a spare minute.” He could _hear_ her marking it down as a lie.

“Okay, well. You’re looking for an MGH supplier, right?”

“Yes.”

“There’s an office building in south Harlem. I’ll text you the address. I think it’s in the basement. I heard word about drug manufacturing down there, might be MGH.”

“Might?”

“No lead is definite, Tony,” she replied. “So, yeah, _might._ But there’s definitely something down there, so you’ll break up _some_ drug ring, even if it’s not the right one.”

“You think Cage would know anything about it? Have more solid intel?”

Nat hummed. “It’s a possibility, but I hear he’s pretty busy these days.”

“Right. Well, thanks. I’ll let Spiderman know.”

“Sure. It’s no problem, Tony. If you ever need anything—”

“Tell Vision to turn his transponder back on,” Tony interrupted. “If we have to do any Avenging, I can’t reach him.”

“I think he’s in love,” Nat drawled.

“I think he’s being irresponsible. There are only two Avengers left if he’s gone, and Rhodes is still in rehab for his legs. If he doesn’t turn it back on—”

“Don’t bother coming back, right?” Nat asked. Tony huffed and she mused, “Isn’t that what Dad used to say about you and getting good grades?”

Tony hung up. He chucked the phone on the desk and squeezed his eyes as tight as he could. _I’m not the bad guy, I’m not the bad guy, I’m not the bad guy._ It wasn’t _wrong_ of him to want Vision online and reachable. It wasn’t _wrong_ of him to say that if Vision put more weight in dating a fugitive in Europe than his job to protect the world, that he shouldn’t bother coming back when it finally suited him. It wasn’t _wrong_ of him to be mad at Nat.

“Mr Stark?”

Tony jumped, spinning suddenly to find Peter, still at his desk, watching with concern. He’d forgotten Peter was there. He’d forgotten there was anyone to witness Tony being an ineffective leader to a mutinous team. There was only one Avenger left in New York, because everyone else left and Rhodey hadn’t touched the War Machine armour since the fight— _the fall, the crashing_ —and the only potential Avenger Tony had managed to find had responsibly told him that he wasn’t ready yet and declined.

Tony pressed his left hand firmly into the edge of the desk, gripping it until his knuckles turned white with strain.

“Kid,” he said, shutting his eyes for a moment. “I forgot you were there.”

“Right. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. There’s a place in Harlem that might be manufacturing the MGH.” As if on cue, Tony’s phone buzzed with _UNKNOWN_. Tony had never changed the I.D. to her name because _Unknown_ felt more accurate. “I’ll send a drone to stake it out tonight for some recon and if it’s good intel we’ll head out there tomorrow night, yeah?”

Peter nodded. “Sure, sure.” The edges of his frown deepened. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Of cour—”

“It just seems like that phone call got to you a little. I suppose the whole _getting back on your good side_ thing didn’t pan out for them.”

Tony shook his head. He knew Nat was trying, that she never would’ve texted him monthly if she didn’t care, that she wouldn’t have approached him about the intel unless she wanted to bridge the gap between them, but: “It’ll take a lot more than a tiny lead to get back on my good side. Here’s a tip for you kid, for all your superheroing needs: don’t work with someone you can’t trust.”

“How do you know if you can’t trust them?”

Tony paused. “If they’ve ever backstabbed someone else with no remorse,” he replied. “Even if it’s their job, or their duty – if they would do it again, question if they’d do it to you, too.”

Peter blinked at the weight in Tony’s voice. “Who was on the phone?”

Tony sighed. “Someone who I forgave for lying to one of my friends and then was surprised when they did it to me.” He shook his head, as if trying to shake out the bad feelings, then tried to sound upbeat when he said, “I’m gonna go wash up before the food gets here. I’ll meet you in the living room, alright? We can watch a movie or something.”

He was already out of the room when Peter said okay, and almost in the bathroom when he remembered Peter’s super hearing, that he likely heard the entire phone call, whether Tony had pressed the phone so firmly against his cheek that it made a mark or not.

_Isn’t that what Dad used to say about you and getting good grades?_

*

Sometimes, Tony thought about building a time machine. Time travel was impossible and broke lots of laws of space and time. It was purely theoretical, and Tony knew as well as any other engineer that if time travel had already been invented, they would likely know about it, because a time traveller would’ve already come back to gloat, but—

Tony imagined building a time machine, like the one from the movies. Like the hot tub or the car or just a large chamber that would tear through the fabric of space and deposit him somewhere earlier – maybe a year or so, maybe less. And he’d be there in the past, knowing what he knew now, _knowing_ Barnes killed his parents, _knowing_ Rogers was keeping that fact from him, _knowing_ that Natasha was going to betray him.

And he’d fix it.

He’d fix it all.

He would stop Zemo at the start; before he bombed the UN, or before he slipped into the CIA. If Barnes never broke out of holding, the Avengers wouldn’t have fought each other, and Natasha wouldn’t have chosen Rogers over her own brother, over _him._ And if she never did that, Tony would never know that she was capable of doing so.

Or, he’d go back further. He’d fix the mission in Lagos, make sure Wanda didn’t blow up an office building full of humanitarian aid workers. He’d stop Rumlow before the marketplace, or even travel back to 2014 and kill him in the Triskelion.

Or, further. Sokovia, which warranted the Accords, which tore the Avengers apart.

Or New York, 2012, which brought them together in the first place. If they never existed, Tony would never feel the pain of them breaking up.

Or Afghanistan, 2008. If he’d ridden with Rhodey on the way back, maybe he would never have been taken, never built the suit of armour, never started this mess.

Or 1991, his parents’ deaths. If Barnes never killed them, Tony would never have fought him in Siberia. Steve would never have rammed his shield into Tony’s chest.

Or 1991, his parents’ funeral. Tony should’ve talked Natasha out of returning to spy work. He should’ve persuaded her to stay with him, to share the empire their parents had given them.

Or 1985, he should’ve never left for college – because that was the first time he left Natasha alone, left her to fend for herself, left her to think that he would not come back for months on end, that he didn’t care for her as much as she thought he did. If he had gone to college with kids his own age, maybe they would never have grown apart enough for her to consider spy work in the first place.

Tony would imagine his time machine, and pinpoint all the moments he could change, all the moments he could edit and fix and rewrite, that might change the present as he knew it, that might make everything better, everything less difficult all the time – like a hundred wormholes opening every night in his dreams, like a reckless kid he couldn’t hope to save forever falling into the Hudson and tearing apart ferries, like his sister, the last piece of the Stark puzzle left on the board, reaching into his chest and tearing out the arc reactor herself.

But he couldn’t blame her for that, really. He was the one who placed her hand on it every time, expecting her to act differently.

*

The intel was good, and so was the take down.

Spiderman locked his fingers together, stretching his arms high above his head. “That was fun. We should do this again some time.”

Tony’s helmet retracted and he peered into a crate filled with blue pills of MGH. “I’m sure we will, Spidey.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, gotta train you to be an Avenger somehow.”

He considered sending a simple _thanks_ to Natasha but didn’t bother. He didn’t want to be the one who bridged the gap – he wanted her to acknowledge what she’d done and fix things with him.

Instead, he and Peter changed back into their normal clothes and he took the kid out for late night celebratory ice cream. Summer would come along soon, and then there’d be weeks of Peter staying at the compound, training with Tony and helping him look through the potential Avenger recruits he’d had an eye on for a while. Rhodey might finally be ready to get back in the armour, and maybe Vision would come back, ready for whatever wackos and villains came out of the woodwork when it was boiling hot and humid as hell itself.

He’d get one text a month from Natasha, and he’d watch the news and vague spottings of ex-Avengers, trawling through Europe on their own missions to take down drug dealers and Hydra cells, but would otherwise keep them all out of his mind.

The kid was far more interesting, anyway.

**2018**

It all happened at once.

One moment he and Pepper were jogging in the park, and then Bruce was stepping out of a glowing yellow portal beside a wizard. _Bruce Banner_ who vanished in a stealthed quinjet into the sky some three years previous.

Then: aliens. Telekinetic, ugly ass _aliens._

Then the kid, fresh off the school bus from a field trip to the MoMA; a doughnut-shaped spaceship, which _of course_ he would climb onto – the aliens stole the wizard, after all. Peter stowing away because he was too good for his own good.

An alien planet, all red dust and ruins.

Thanos.

In his head for six years and now finally here before him with magical, all-powerful space rocks, coming to tear the universe clean in two, right down the centre.

A battle that raged in a hundred different ways at once, moon crashing into the planet, his own blade through his stomach, a losing fight Tony should’ve never thought he’d win.

*

Some twenty-five years ago in the pouring rain: “Do you think aliens exist?”

“We’re at our parents’ funeral, Tony.”

“Still.”

“No,” Natasha replied. “I don’t think aliens exist. Do you?”

He smiled and rubbed her arm. The rain was starting to let up. “No reason not to,” he said.

The question should not have been _do aliens exist_ , he thought, years later in the silence after Thanos escaped. It should’ve been, _will they be hostile? Will they destroy the universe? Will they come for my home?_

*

Peter’s breathing was all sharp inhales, desperate and laboured. It was filled with pleading, bargaining, begging. _I don’t wanna go._ He asked Tony to save him, to help him; stared up at him with large, panicked eyes, pain coursing through every nerve in his body, limbs shaking and shuddering and—

Disintegrating.

“I’m sorry,” Peter said, before he lost the fight, before his body drooped, relaxed, then crumbled away into fine ash, caught up on the breeze of an alien planet, thousands of miles away from home. His eyes drifted up to the sky, his face cracked like porcelain, and then he was gone.

*

Tony waited to turn to ash. But he didn’t. He wasn’t as lucky as that. Though, when he thought about it, he never had been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mgh is a drug from the comics and features in the first young avengers volume
> 
> also, one chapter left. who's ready for endgame?


	9. in the endgame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am t h r i l l e d this fic is finished  
> t h r i l l e d
> 
> this chapter took literally forever because it's 9k long and i had troubles with the ending,, but it's all fixed now and i'm psyched for you to read it! enjoy the ending!!

**2023**

Tony knew death intimately. It had followed him, dogged at his heels, three claws piercing his shoulder blades and dragging gently down for as long as he could remember. There were the party boy days, high on riches and cocaine, both before and after Natasha’s disappearance. There were the drunk driving crashes he staggered away from, the accidental overdoses in his bathtub, the almost falling off ledges at rooftop shindigs. Then, later, there was Afghanistan, the shrapnel, the open-heart surgery he still shot himself back into in his nightmares. The Iron Man suits and the danger that came with them; planes shooting at him, drones on his tail, exploding bodies heated with Extremis fit to tear him to pieces.

A wormhole above New York City and the aliens that poured from the breach.

Ultron, a falling city, a creation gone so terribly wrong.

A shield rammed into his chest.

The feeling when his family was gone and he was left alone; when Pepper couldn’t handle him anymore, when Steve had other priorities, when Natasha stabbed him in the back, her dagger surely one of the three taloned-claws that still sat there, no matter how the wound had healed over.

Everything felt like death, these days, and this even more so.

Power, ash, an army reduced to dust.

The white that overcame him. The infinity stones, telling him _too much, too much, we are too much for your mortal body to hold._ Tony not caring, pleading _just one more second, give me one more moment, let me see a whole world._

Pepper pressed her lips against his cheek. “You can rest now.”

He wondered how he got here, from the white to his wife dressed in the Rescue suit, the armour he’d made for her, perfecting it as he did his own. _Rest._ That sounded nice, sounded peaceful, sounded like something he could go for right about now.

If he could only shut his eyes, let the burning fire fade away, and just _be._

Tears streamed down Pepper’s face, and behind her was the fuzzy image of Rhodey holding Peter’s arms, holding him back, holding him up. _Oh, kid._ Tony had just got him back. Tony had been looking forward to introducing him to Morgan, to seeing him graduate, helping him move into his college dorm room. All that was fading now.

Everything was fading now.

_You can rest now,_ Pepper had said.

_Yes,_ Tony thought, _I can._

A breath rattled out of his lungs. It felt final. And then the world descended into darkness.

**2018**

They were in the same room, but Tony didn’t know if it counted as being together. Natasha’s presence was as silent as it had always been, a spy who knew how to fade into the background and slip from his mind.

Steve’s was more prominent.

He’d changed his hair since the last time Tony had seen him, had bulked out a little more as if it were necessary – or maybe, Tony thought, he just looked bigger now Tony was nothing more than skin and bones. He was the poster boy for malnutrition, spending three weeks with little food and littler oxygen.

When he’d awoken to the glowing beacon of Carol Danvers, he’d thought afterwards about the chair he was sat in, facing out towards the great unknown, the boundless voice of space that would’ve watched over him as he died. Because, Tony knew, he would’ve died that night, had they not been found. And the space dust would’ve collected his soul as it left his body to nurture it amongst the stars for all eternity. He was a little gone with space madness, but Tony liked the sound of that kind of death.

He’d been going back and forth on being grateful and not that Peter was already dead. He’d turned into a different kind of dust and would still be littering Thanos’ home planet, trodden ash, indistinguishable from Quill’s or Strange’s. Maybe nebulas of space dust weren’t looking after Peter, but it was better than watching him die on that ship, better than watching a slow, aching decline, and knowing for days on end that there was nothing Tony could do to save him.

Better to know he couldn’t do a damn thing for a few seconds of Peter’s childlike pleading than weeks of his silent deterioration.

In the end, on the day Tony thought he’d die, he had two nebulas looking out of him; the one that would collect the pieces of his existence and form new stars and galaxies from his broken shards, and the one who’d picked him up and placed him in that chair, to look out across the galaxy in his final few moments.

But they were not his final few moments, and Tony was both grateful and not for this, too.

*

Natasha slipped into his room while he was sleeping off the rage and starvation, so he awoke to find her sitting at the end of his bed, her legs crossed over the blanket and a book in her hands. She wore a version of her Black Widow get up he’d never seen before – had she got a new tailor since she vanished underground? She must’ve, because Tony hadn’t sent them anything he’d made, and her suit was looking newer and more worn than if she’d still been wearing the one he’d made for her.

A slight smile appeared for a brief moment when she saw he was awake, but it was gone a moment later as she folded down the top corner of a page and placed the closed book on the bed.

Tony refused to speak first, so when it was clear he wouldn’t say a thing, Natasha announced, “We found Thanos.”

Tony blinked. How long had he been out? They _found_ Thanos? Had they saved the day already? Was everyone reformed and back—oh, God, Peter was on a distant planet – no, Strange would be there, too, and he’d first appeared to Tony in a glowing golden portal, so he’d surely transport Peter home. How had Tony missed this? Why hadn’t they woken him up?

“We went to the planet he moved to,” Natasha continued after she’d clocked his eyes widening, his body tensing with the news. “We got back a few hours ago. He—uh. He destroyed the stones before we got there. A few days ago, actually.”

A stretch of silence, then, _Oh._ So—they hadn’t saved they universe since he collapsed. They hadn’t done a damn thing and Peter was still gone and his body was still ash on a foreign red planet Tony couldn’t reach again—

“He’s dead, but, well.” Natasha shook her head. “We couldn’t bring everyone back.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Tony rasped. He coughed, tightness in his throat, and Natasha slipped off the bed to grab the water on the side table. She tilted the straw to his mouth and Tony drank until she gently pulled it away.

“Not too much,” she said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“I _am_ sick,” Tony grumbled. “I’m sick of being in this bed – no one told me you were going out there.”

“And what would you have done?” she asked, pointed, as she set the cup down. “You couldn’t come with us in your state – the armour would’ve broken your back. So you would’ve just been sitting here, waiting—”

“How long was I out?”

“All day,” Nat replied.

“So how did you travel to another planet, kill Thanos _and_ get back—”

“The ship you came in on,” she said as she climbed back onto the bed. “Rocket and Nebula fixed the oxygen filtration system this morning as well as the jump drive. We just—I don’t know, _teleported_ there. I think Danvers mentioned folding space or something like that. Very scientific, _really_ cool when it was happening. The whole Thanos thing didn’t take more than five minutes, anyway.”

Tony blinked. “We fought him for ages—”

“He was weakened,” she said with a shrug. “Half his body was burned and mangled, I think one of his hands was a stump. I didn’t look too closely. We arrived, he told us he destroyed the stones, Thor beheaded him.”

“Thor beheaded him?”

She nodded, settling into her spot on the mattress. “He’s got a big axe now. His hammer got destroyed by his goth sister.”

Tony frowned. “I thought he had a goth brother.”

“Sure. But he has a sister, too. Or, had. A giant hell beast killed her. Thor’s the middle child, if you’ll believe that.”

Tony tilted his head to the side, barely. It ached his neck to move. “Showboat, sounds like he’s performing Hamlet, like, all the time, likes attention—yeah, I can see that.”

Nat cracked a smile and this time it didn’t fade. She twisted her fingers into the end of the blanket. “And Danvers,” she said. “She’s old pals with Fury. They have a cat-share.”

“A _what?_ ”

“A cat-share. They co-own a cat. He’s orange. He’s called Goose. He may also be a dangerous alien monster and once ate the Tesseract.” Tony blinked, and Natasha pulled a face as she nodded. “You don’t have to believe me, but—”

“No, I believe you,” Tony said, and he found, surprisingly, that he did. “That’s too dumb to make up. It _ate_ the Tesseract?”

“Yeah, and you know all those rumours about how Fury got the eyepatch?”

“Took on forty men all by himself and left with only one eye and one remaining bullet.”

Natasha scoffed. She leaned forward, shaking her head. “Cat scratch.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Nope! Alien cat scratched him _one time_ and he lost the eye.”

“But kept the cat?”

Natasha grinned. “I imagine it’s a really cute cat.”

“It’d have to be. And the glowing lady knew him… when?”

“Back in the nineties.”

“She’s _not_ that old.”

“Sure is. She’s your age, she’s just magical.”

“Why can’t I be magical?” Tony grumbled, tipping his head back against the pillow. “Thor’s got that whole _god_ thing going on, I fought beside a _literal wizard_ last month—”

“Hey, you’re preaching to the choir,” Nat interrupted, raising her hands. “Clint and I are the only Avengers who _don’t_ have something weird going on.”

“I don’t—”

“You’ve got a suit of armour. Vision is— _was_ —an android.” There was a flash of emotion at the mistake but she kept going. “It was just me and Clint who were normal.”

“I always found it amusing that he brought a bow and arrow to a gun fight.”

“I always found it amusing that we brought humans to interstellar wars,” Natasha replied.

Tony breathed out slow, through his nose. “You heard from him yet?”

She shook her head. “No, but there are signs that he’s still alive. His bow is gone from his house, as is the pack he usually takes with him when he’s off on missions.”

“And his family?”

“Nothing’s been touched. It’s like… it’s like his whole family dusted and he just _left._ I’m still trying to track him, but—”

“He’s a literal secret agent,” Tony completed. “Difficult to track.”

“Difficult to track,” Natasha agreed.

“Wish I could give you some pointers,” Tony sighed, “but only way I could keep tabs on you was via Rogers showing up on security cameras. Super spies avoid them pretty well.”

Nat nodded in agreement and the two of them lapsed into silence.

Tony was, always, the smartest one in the room, so he knew that he and Nat had connected there, somewhere in the conversation, knew that it wasn’t awkward until he mentioned her disappearance, knew that, deep down, they were still the same people who loved each other, even if the surface was at odds. He also knew that the universe had just torn in two and now was not the time to be pushing away the people he loved most.

Luckily for him, Natasha was often the second smartest person in the room, and he watched her come to the same conclusion.

It was a flash in her eyes, the way her lips pulled up into something wistful, and her fingers tucked a lock of dyed blonde hair behind her ear. She lowered her gaze until they were trained on the blanket Pepper had draped across the bed, and her fingers continued to tangle in the fabric.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know I don’t—I don’t deserve forgiveness for betraying you, but—”

“But?”

She raised her eyes to his. “But I’m asking for it anyway.” Tony swallowed, mouth dry, throat twinging, and his sister continued, “You couldn’t forgive me for lying to Bruce, and then the whole year after was strained and tense, and—” she shook her head. “I can’t go through that again. Not now. Not after Thanos, not after spending a year away… I’m sorry, Tony. I believed in the Accords, but I believed that what Steve was doing was more important than them. That he knew what he was doing, and it would be for the greater good.” She shook her head, pressing her lips into a thin line. “You’re the person I love most in this world—”

“What about Clint?”

“Close second,” she allowed, almost smiling. “But you and I – we’re thirty years strong, Tony. You’re—you’re my big brother, and I can’t keep going on like this. I can’t spend the next decade with you barely looking me in the eye or thinking that you can’t trust me. You _can._ ” She slid off the bed, then, and moved further up it, settling back on by his side, her thigh pressed into his. Nat took his hand between hers, continuing, “I’m on your side. Always. Forever. Whatever you need, I’ll do it. I’m just—I’m _sorry_ , Tony. For everything.”

Tony didn’t move at first, Natasha still staring him in the eye, waiting for his response. He only thought about her, about the way she’d stripped back every layer of deception and disguise to show him something real; _someone_ real. Her.

“Nat.”

“Tony.”

It would be a long apocalypse if he didn’t have his sister by his side.

Tony swallowed, then smiled as best he could. He reached out with his spare hand and guided her forward, until she leant against him, head on his shoulder, arm wrapped loosely around his torso. He held her and she held him, and the cracked space between his ribs felt a little more full than before, a little less dented.

“I forgive you,” he murmured, shutting his eyes. “I forgive you.”

The residual anger drained from his body as Nat turned her head into the crook of his neck, her smile pressed against his shoulder.

“I don’t want to go through this without you,” he told her, and he tightened his grip around his sister despite the growing ache in his arms, the way his body was desperate to fall asleep again.

“You won’t,” she promised, quiet. “I’m not leaving you again. Whatever’s next, we do it together.”

“Together,” he agreed, and Tony fell asleep with his sister in his arms.

**2019**

“Stop being a pussy, Tony,” Nat hissed as she clawed the tissue he was shredding from his hands.

“I’m not being a pussy—”

“You’re _so_ being a pussy.”

“It’s my wedding day, I’m allowed to be nervous,” he shot back, shaking out his hands and looking back to the mirror. Perfectly fitted white suit, perfectly styled hair, perfectly trimmed goatee – he looked _great_ , Tony knew that. He also knew he was about to watch Pepper walk down the aisle so the likelihood of his kneels buckling and him faceplanting in the dirt was high. Oh _God_ , he should’ve worn something darker to hide the stains.

Nat smoothed her palms across his shoulders. She was technically Pepper’s maid of honour, the pastel-coloured dress she wore matching Pepper’s sister’s, but she was Tony’s sister first and had come to help him out as Rhodey had already cried twice and that was just freaking Tony out more.

“You look amazing,” she told him, as sincere as she could. “Pepper looks amazing. The whole day is going to be amazing. You _deserve_ this, and you two are going to have a long and happy life together.”

Tony nodded, and nodded, and nodded some more.

“I’d kiss your cheek,” she continued, “but I’d get lipstick on it. Settle for a hug?” Tony folded Nat into his arms and they stood there for a moment, clinging to one another like there were no other lifelines in the world. They were it.

Tony had missed this feeling; Tony had missed feeling like he and Nat were two sides of the same coin, their little fingers entwined for all eternity and their hearts beating in sync.

She took her leave and Tony stared at his reflection in the mirror. He’d commandeered the guest bedroom of their lake house, while Pepper had taken over the master. Outside, music and voices floated up to his open window, and the lake stretched out, dappled with green leaves and yellow sunlight.

Tony desperately wished Peter was here to see it.

The kid’s absence during the planning of the wedding had become more and more palpable as the days went on. Flower arrangements – he’d surely have an opinion. Cake tasting – he’d once raved about the richest chocolate cake he’d ever eaten for three days straight. Dress shopping – Peter loved and supported every outfit Pepper had ever worn, and even Tony’s wife-to-be would’ve liked him there, cheering her on.

It was painfully strange without him. They’d only known each other for two years when Peter had crumbled away in his hands, but Tony had realised on the journey back to Earth that Peter had been part of the family. That he should’ve been standing up there beside Rhodey and Happy.

Tony heaved out a breath, eyes flicking to the photos that lined the wall of the guest room. Currently, Rhodey and Nat were tied for most frequent visitor, and both of them liked the photos Pepper had hung in here. The original six Avengers on their first night out as a team – a selfie that Natasha had taken while Clint put Thor in a headlock and Steve was pounding back shots at Tony’s insistence to prove that he couldn’t get drunk. Another of Tony and Rhodey in their MIT days, matching sweaters and lopsided grins in front of their lab building, pictured burning from an experiment they would never own up to performing.

And there, right beside the mirror, amongst all the others, was Peter Parker. His smile ridiculously wide, his sleeves shoved up to his elbows, and his shoulder pressed against Tony’s where they sat in a diner booth, a massive banana split sundae on the table in front of them.

Pepper had taken the photo and she’d also bought the sundae, congratulating Peter on coming first place at his science fair.

Tony really, really wanted Peter here for the wedding.

He tugged his suit jacket straight and nodded to himself in the mirror. “You’ve got this,” he muttered. He glanced back to Peter in the diner. _Good luck Mr Stark,_ he could hear the kid saying, so vivid and real, as if he were standing right beside him.

“When we get you back,” he whispered, “we’ll do a do-over wedding, just for you.”

It was a thought that came, unbidden, but he let it stay anyway. He wasn’t past trying to change reality, to bring back all who were lost, to claw Peter’s soul back from the beyond. Hope was dwindling faster than he’d like, but Tony was determined – one day. One day, Peter Parker would be beside him, and Tony would renew his vows just so the kid could be by his side when he did so.

He took a breath.

It was almost time to start.

Out in the hall, Rhodey had stopped crying, and Tony sent him a blinding smile. “Come on, honey pie, let’s go get me married.”

*

It was almost ten months to the day later when Morgan N. Stark came into the world.

Tony’s hands were shaking so bad he couldn’t get behind the wheel, couldn’t drive without swerving violently off the road.

“Fuck no,” Steve said in the passenger seat as Tony shakily pulled over the to side of the road. “We’re switching. Get out.”

“This car is worth more than your entire existence,” Tony shot back, though his voice was weak.

“Then I won’t scratch it. Get out. I’m not letting you kill us before you get to see your kid.”

Tony let himself be pulled out of the car, and he climbed into the passenger seat, letting Steve take the wheel. They’d been in Brooklyn, where Steve’s apartment was filled with nostalgia and a past he would never return to. _That’s all it is, though,_ Steve had said as Tony looked pointedly at the record player, the grainy photos of the Commandos and Bucky-Fucking-Barnes, unwitting parent killer. _I realised a while ago that even if I went back, I’d be leaving everything I love here behind._

The two of them had been shoved in a small room some time after Tony had put back on the weight and Steve had cut his hair to something more familiar. They’d been locked in there by Natasha, and hadn’t been let out for seven hours, until they’d yelled over every problem that stood between them, and eventually made a quiet, painstaking breakthrough.

(“I’m not pissed about Barnes,” Tony had sighed into the silence at the beginning of hour six. “I mean, I’m pissed you didn’t tell me, but him – he didn’t do those things. The other guy did. It’s like blaming Bruce for the buildings the Hulk wrecks – Barnes had no control.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Steve had replied, the two of them sat pressed up against the wall. “I just—it was _Bucky,_ you know? I get blindsided by him every time. Like, my body physically rejects the idea of him doing any wrong. I’m hardwired to protect him. He could kill the president and I wouldn’t care. Hell, he _did_ kill the president—”

“What?”

“JFK.”

“No shit. Seriously?”

Steve had hummed before huffing out a laugh. “I should’ve told you. Our friendship is important to me, Tony – being without it actually kind of sucks.”)

“Go faster,” Tony said now, shaking like a leaf as Steve already did twenty above the speed limit towards the hospital.

“If I go any faster, we’ll have to pretend aliens are invading again to get by the police.”

They got to the hospital with plenty of time to spare, though Natasha sent them a perfectly raised eyebrow when the two burst into the room as Pepper screamed through a contraction.

“Nice to see you boys,” Natasha smiled.

Steve blinked at a red-face Pepper as she collapsed back into the bed. “You—I—I’m gonna—”

“Get out,” Pepper huffed.

“Thank you,” Steve replied, turning on his heel. The door shut behind him and Tony brushed Pepper’s hair away from her forehead. He smiled down at her and she grimaced back.

“This is the only one,” she told him. “After this, I’m never shoving anything out of my vagina again.”

“Understood,” Tony said, his smile stretching into a grin.

*

His baby girl was tiny in his arms. A little life, red-faced and squirming in her sleep. She was everything he could’ve ever wanted, everything he could’ve ever asked for. She was _his._ She was the love of his life. She was already the most perfect person Tony had ever laid eyes on.

In the hospital waiting room, the Avengers sat around in various states of disarray, their feet tapping nervously on the floor, flipping through newspapers that didn’t interest them, checking the clock every few seconds.

They all looked up when Tony stepped in, the bundle wrapped tightly in his arms.

“Hi,” he said, quiet, and slowly they all stood, surrounding him to get a good look the baby. “Here she is.”

“She?” Rhodey asked.

“Mhm. My little girl. Morgan Natasha Stark.”

The surprise on Natasha’s face was worth every moment of arguing they’d ever endured; every fight, every scathing comment and cruel word – it all vanished in that moment. In her eyes wide, her mouth open, gaze darting from Tony to baby and back again.

“Hi Morgan,” Steve whispered.

Natasha pressed her cheek into Tony’s shoulder. “Hi baby.”

**2020**

Tony returned home with the grocery shopping to find a sleek black Audi on the drive. He therefore wasn’t surprised to see Steve and Natasha on the sofa, Pepper puttering around the kitchen as the kettle boiled. He was surprised, however, to see Morgan in Steve’s lap wearing Captain America pyjamas.

“Hey, no,” Tony said, frowning. “She’s an Iron Man fan, what are you doing?”

“She likes Cap, too,” Steve replied, poking Morgan’s belly and smiling softly as she giggled.

“No, she likes Iron Man and _possibly_ Thor.”

“What about Black Widow?” Nat asked.

“Eh,” Tony hummed, dumping the shopping bags in the kitchen. “She’s a little overrated if you ask me.”

A pillow slammed with deadly accuracy into the side of his head, but when he looked back into the living room, both Natasha and Steve were innocently playing with his daughter.

**2021**

“You see Bruce recently?” Natasha asked as Tony carefully shut Morgan’s bedroom door. Natasha wasn’t around often – she was leading the Avengers and remaining Guardians from the compound upstate, but she always tried to visit every other weekend.

“Big, green and lucid?” Tony replied, equally as quiet.

They stepped softly down the hall.

“He seems to like it like that,” Nat hummed, her eyes on everything but Tony. “But it’s—”

“Strange?”

“Yeah.”

Tony nodded. “You never think about what the world is gonna be like after it ends,” he said. “This is just that. If that’s what makes him happy—”

“Sure. I visited New Asgard this week.”

“Oh, yeah. I meant to ask you about that.” The stairs squeaked as they stepped on them, the entire house shed in a low yellow light. Downstairs, Pepper was in the living room, curled on the sofa with a book in her hands. Tony nodded Nat into the kitchen. “Thor won’t pick up the phone when I call.”

“He’s—not in a good place.”

“Figured.”

“I think he blames himself for all this. You know, for not going for the head, for—”

“We all did things wrong,” Tony said, low. “We weren’t in the strongest place when Thanos arrived, and then Strange is trading infinity stones for my life and Wanda’s trading the universe for Vision’s—”

“That was a group decision,” Nat reminded him. “We don’t trade lives.”

Tony levelled her with a tired look as he leant against the counter. They’d had this conversation a hundred times in the past three years – they all had. “We always trade lives,” Tony said, low. “It’d be nice if everything was as cut-and-dry as Steve’s ideals, but it’s not. If we hadn’t traded lives this time, maybe the universe would’ve been saved. Maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe Strange was right and there’s only one existence in all fourteen million where we leave this happy.”

Natasha pulled a face. “Steve’s still doing that group at the VA if you ever wanna go by,” she said, expertly slipping into a new conversation.

“Hm. Steve as my therapist. Sounds like a terrible idea. You seen Clint recently?”

“Still looking. But—he’s out there. He’s causing all kinds of bullshit, but he’s out there.”

Tony smiled at her softly, all hazy yellow in the dark. “You’ll find him,” he said. “If anyone’s gonna get him back, it’s you.”

**2022**

Morgan sat on Natasha’s back, her legs wrapped around her aunt’s waist, her arms at her neck. They span around in the rain, screaming and laughing and getting drenched in the downpour, while Tony watched from the porch.

It was his birthday. He’d had a good day, all things considered.

Pepper leaned against the railing on his left and Rhodey on his right. Inside, Carol and Steve – the two Captains – were playing Twister with Bruce spinning the board and Nebula disconnecting her elbow or shoulder so she could reach farther dots of colour and bend in impossible ways to win.

There was a talking racoon, somewhere.

When Tony had woken up that morning to Morgan jumping on his stomach, he’d carried her downstairs to find the photo of Tony and Peter that sat on the kitchen shelf in the middle of the kitchen island. He ate breakfast with his family, then; Morgan, Pepper, Natasha and the photo of Peter watching on.

Thanos was decidedly wrong, and Tony would never think otherwise. Earth wasn’t healing from the damage, they were just learning to keep moving with the pain. It was like breaking an arm, and instead of righting the bone and placing it in a cast, Thanos had left it at an angle and expected it to end up perfectly straight.

But Tony’s forearm was broken at a ninety-degree angle, and bone was still sticking straight through the skin. He figured it’d never heal at this rate.

**2023**

On the porch of the lake house, a supposedly dead man: “Time travel.”

Tony swore he wouldn’t even consider it, but then they all stayed for lunch, and Tony stared at Peter’s photo on the kitchen shelf, and he huffed because he was considering it.

*

He shouldn’t have considered it.

*

Clint dropped to his knees and Tony knew.

Natasha Romanoff, his little sister, was dead.

*

Tony looked out across the lake.

He tried to smile but couldn’t muster one. “We give her a funeral. With flowers and friends and lots of alcohol. Then, we save the world.”

*

Natasha didn’t have just one funeral. She had hundreds.

“She’s probably lying on a beach somewhere with a martini,” Tony told Morgan. “Or recklessly driving on an empty highway. Or she’s on stage, dancing ballet. Yeah… Wherever she is, she’s happy.”

*

Tony didn’t know how he didn’t notice – but Nebula wasn’t Nebula.

They picked themselves back up, clambered through the rubble of the compound, and launched into another battle with the titan himself.

*

Halfway through, he saw the kid.

The breath left his lungs as Peter landed before him amongst the rubble and offered him a hand up.

Then he was off, leaping back into the fray, and Tony was left comparing Peter’s smile to Natasha’s when she was his age.

*

Scott’s shitty van blew up.

Natasha would’ve kicked all kinds of serious ass in this battle, and everyone knew it.

*

Thanos got the gauntlet and Tony rushed forward.

*

“I am inevitable.”

“And I… am Iron Man.”

**IN A PLACE WITHOUT TIME**

“Did you know?” Tony asked, mild, when his eyes settled in against the white. Everything was laced with colour, with green and yellow, orange and red, blue and purple – just a little over the horizon of everything, there it was, racing, thumping like heartbeat trails.

“Did I know what?” Natasha asked, beside him.

She wore a comfortable white t-shirt and sweats, her silver arrow necklace glittering at the hollow of her throat. Her hair was like it was the day she died; long, with the blonde grown out to the ends, a messy braid down her back.

“Did you know that Barnes killed our parents?”

“When?”

“When I found out.”

Natasha shook her head and turned off towards the distance. There was nothing there, but Tony felt like there could’ve been something he just wasn’t seeing. “Steve told me when we were dropping Barnes off in Wakanda a week later. I had… suspicions.”

“Yeah?”

She hummed. “I knew of the Winter Soldier, even fought him once. He shot me to shoot the person I was protecting. And when I looked back on our parents’ deaths, some ten years later, all I could think was that the whole scene had seemed a little… _off._ I thought it might’ve been him, but Steve confirmed it.”

“Were you mad?”

“At Barnes? A little.”

“At Steve?”

“Furious. He’d known for a while. It was a few days of tense silence, I’ll tell you that much.”

Tony blew out a breath and peered at his sister. “Is this real?”

“Real as life.”

“Where are we right now?”

She shrugged. “I want to say a special portion of the afterlife dedicated to the stones, but that seems too specific.”

“So we’re dead.”

“I think so. Do you mind?”

“Being dead?”

“Mhm.”

He scoffed. “I knew it would happen eventually. Just—thought it would’ve been ten years ago in a wormhole.”

“I thought I was gonna get shot by Clint.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We made a deal. I was gonna kill him, he was gonna kill me. Now he has no one to kill him.”

Tony pulled his lips into a smile and shuffled closer. Nat automatically dropped her head onto his shoulder. “I wanted to live long enough to see Morgan grow up,” he said at last.

“I would’ve liked that, too. I never wanted that for myself, but I always wanted that life for you.”

Tony hummed. “I always thought you were in love with Clint.”

“Maybe I was, at some point. He brought me back to life after I’d tried to destroy myself in Russia. He made me whole again. Then three years into placing all the trust in my body in his hands, I find out he already has a family.”

There was a sad smile on Natasha’s face, like she didn’t mind _really,_ but still must sometimes think about how her life might be had it shifted just a little to the left. Then it abruptly changed, and she sat back to look at Tony.

“Did he cry?”

“When you died?” She nodded. “Like a baby.”

There was a triumphant smile on her face that made him laugh. When he did, the colours that stretched behind the white pulsed closer, brighter.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly, as if she could see them too, now. “You know what that means.”

“No?”

“Neither do I, but I think you should follow it.”

There was no path, lit up by the colours, no clear direction to take in the tangle of lights. Tony stood uneasily, grabbing Natasha’s hand and pulling her up beside him.

“Where would it take me?” he asked, and started off slowly, in the direction that felt right. He wasn’t following but he was, and Tony’s right hand began to ache as he walked, which was strange because it had always been his left.

“Home, maybe,” Nat replied. “Oh, you could go home.”

Tony frowned. “What about you?”

“I think I’m dead on an alien planet somewhere.”

“I think I’m dead on Earth.”

“Still. Was mine more traumatic?”

Tony smiled a curious smile, and his hand pulsed with pain. “Do you _want_ your death to be more traumatic?”

She hummed and shrugged. “More _dramatic_ , maybe.”

Tony looked down at his right hand at last, finding the pain to be more intense the longer he looked. There, on the back of his hand, along the knuckles and right in the centre, were the infinity stones, glowing, imbedded in his skin.

“Clint said you sacrificed yourself for him.”

“For the universe, too, I guess,” she said with a shrug. “But for him. Always for him.”

Her eyes were unfocused, her smile a little lax. Tony wondered if this was even his sister, if this was Natasha Romanoff or someone else – some _thing_ else, infinity stone-powered and here to drag him down or pull him somewhere else entirely. But she just kept holding his hand and the two of them followed the colours behind the white, and Tony stretched his hand out, screaming in pain though he didn’t so much as flinch, stones glittering along his bones.

“Go home,” she told him, suddenly. “Go home.”

“Not without you.”

“ _Tony._ ”

“No.” He gripped her hand tight in his own, brow furrowing. Her eyes were the same green he’d always known, but now they were dappled with a spectrum of colours, reflected from the stones in his hand. “Not without you.”

“I made my deal,” she said, soft. “I’m already gone.”

“Only for a few days,” he replied.

“Felt like years,” she murmured, soft.

Tony shook his head. “Three days,” he replied. “Only three and the worst three of my life… So come back with me.”

“Tony—”

He turned, suddenly, towards the pulsing lights just beyond the white. They became stronger, louder, the more he stared. “I want to take her back with me.” There was no response, just the same heartbeat, pulsing.

“Tony,” Nat whispered. “I made a deal. A soul for a soul.”

“Then I’ll make another,” he replied. “You for me. My soul for yours—”

“You’re already dead—”

“I’ll come back to life. Die again.”

“ _Tony._ ”

“ _Nat._ ”

They stared at each other as the colours grew louder and brighter and the white began to seep away behind them. On the back of his hand, the stones grew warm with energy, as if they were charging up, growing brighter and brighter.

“We’ve done our time,” he said, to the stones, to Natasha, to whatever corner of the universe might’ve been listening in. “We’ve given up our lives to save others, we’ve risked everything we had—why can’t we just _rest?_ Why can’t we just live peaceful lives on Earth? Why can’t we have that?”

“Tony, it’s too late for that.”

“It’s not too late. Look.” He held out his hand between them, his skin scarred and puckered around the stones. “Let us go back,” he begged. “Let us go home – let us be happy. Do we not deserve that?”

_It’s not about deserve,_ he thought he heard, somewhere in the space between existence. _It’s about the passage of life._

“Ours were cut short,” he said. “Please. _Please._ I can’t go back without her. I won’t.” The hand in Natasha’s twisted tighter as the stones pulsed in time to the trails of colour that surrounded them. Long gone was the serenity of endless white – now a rainbow curled around their bodies, every colour Tony had ever seen, every colour he hadn’t, and they were calling him, breaking apart and slotting back together, reminding him that he was the wielder, he had the power resting on the back of his hand.

And he thought, for just a second, why didn’t he just do it? Why was he bothering with _asking?_

“Because we’re the good guys,” Natasha said, apparently privy to his thoughts in a space without time or matter. Tony met her gaze, full of a thousand things he couldn’t bring himself to find words for – love for his sister, a desperate longing for home, pride that she’d finally lost the red she believed stained her ledger, and found that she hadn’t been bad, not _really_ , for a long time.

“We’re the good guys,” he agreed, and Natasha took his right hand, interlacing their fingers. “So we ask, and if they say no—”

“We stay,” she finished. “And we make our peace with that.”

There was a moment of quiet between them, hands enclosed around each other, before Tony said, “Will you send us home?”

“Please,” Natasha whispered, her eyes shutting, her head tipping forward. “ _Please._ ”

And then Tony felt the energy surge through him, just the same as he had on the battlefield, what felt like centuries before. He winced at the pain, at the power, and then dipped his head forward, forehead pressed against Natasha’s, eyes fluttering shut.

The power of the infinity stones raced through them, as if making up their minds. Tony felt it all in a moment; the stones searching through their memories, their lives, weighing up the good, the bad, the ugly, and placing it against their righteous passage of time.

They pulled up images of Tony as a child, small and bent over a circuit board; Natasha as a screaming baby in a too-small kitchen in the arms of a man who did everything he could not to look at her; Nat twirling in her tutu, arms poised like nothing he’d ever seen before; Tony sneaking bottles from liquor cabinets and cigarettes from bedside tables. Then there was a rush of orange, the moment they first met, the moments that came after – Natasha sobbing in a pitch-black bedroom, fist pressed against her mouth to smother the sounds; a series of destroyed ties, broken ashtrays and shattered jewellery; Tony and Natasha and Natasha and Tony and—

Gunshots ripping through silence in offices, bedrooms, galas; Natasha’s green eyes staring out from a balaclava; a silver dress wrapped around her body; blood underneath her fingernails that she idly picked out with the blade of a knife. Then weapons, destruction, bombs and bodies flying, spines shattering on the walls they’re thrown into, buildings toppling as smoke plumes into the air. The Jericho, the desert, the open-heart surgery in graphic, gory detail – in and out of consciousness, screaming and choking on his own blood as a magnet in his chest was connected to a car battery. Then—

Clint, his bow pointed at Natasha’s head, then it tilting downwards; a suit of armour, an arc reactor, Ho Yinsen saying _Don’t waste your life_ and Tony desperately trying to follow his advice.

And then Natasha and Tony, Tony and Natasha; curled around each other in sleep and in wake, the moments of Avenging, fighting, arguing, screaming, the moments of silence after, napping, cooking, reading. Their lives two orange streaks on the backs of their eyelids, curling towards and away from one another at high velocity, until they wrapped tightly, braided together, spinning until a knot formed so tight they’d never pull away—

Blood on their hands and in their hearts, and the rain washing it all away—

Clint and Pepper and Morgan and Peter, Happy and Rhodey and Steve and Sam—

Unconditional love that flowed through their bodies, desperate to be shared after so long of being tampered down, beliefs of _I don’t deserve this_ strangling them in their sleep.

“You deserve it more than anyone I’ve ever met,” Tony whispered through the haze, and he knew that Natasha understood because she was seeing their whole lives unravel, too, seeing every mistake and every heartbreak and every moment of redemption and hurt that they put themselves through to wash away the guilt and make themselves whole—

And then

And then

And then

**2023**

Tony gasped back to life and choked on the oxygen that poured into his lungs.

“Th-thank you,” he croaked, hoarse, knowing the stones were listening.

Blinking back into the world, he stared up at the overcast sky, and then at Steve Rogers, who was gazing back down at him, eyes wide as he carried Tony away from the battlefield. There was a moment of silence, in which Steve almost dropped him, but then his face broke out into a smile and he laughed.

For the moment, as he was set back down on the ground, friends rushing over to see him, there was no pain, but he knew that wouldn’t last long. Everything was numb, aching, and when he looked down at his right hand, gauntlet mangled and burnt to his arm, the stones stared right back. They hadn’t left him; they’d gone with him – wherever that had been, wherever he’d vanished to and woken up again on the other shore – and they were still with him now, waiting for him to ask, because—they appreciated being _asked_ rather than ordered. Now the entire universe was settled between his shoulder blades, Tony knew that the stones had always been listening, always waiting for someone to care about the sentience inside them.

“P-please,” he whispered, reaching out his hand. Pepper and Rhodey collapsed by his side, crying and laughing and asking him to stay still, _don’t hurt yourself,_ but—“Natasha, please.”

The blue of the space stone ( _tesseract, wormhole, Steve Rogers crashing into the ice and Tony Stark crashing into Manhattan)_ glowed and Sam Wilson jumped back as a smoky portal opened where he was standing, reaching out a hand across the universe and opening a door to—

“Natasha,” Clint breathed, as the image became clear; a woman climbing up from the ground on a purple-black planet, a sheer cliff face before her and an angry sky above. “Natasha!” She turned, the woman, blood staining her head and nose, matting her hair. Wide-eyed, she stared at them, unmoving.

“D-don’t have all day,” Tony huffed, voice barely even loud enough to hear – but she must’ve because she whirred back into action, stepping through the portal and falling into Clint’s outstretched arms.

And then Tony dropped his hand and the smoke vanished and he hacked up a lung in the aftermath.

“Tony,” Pepper whispered.

“You were dead,” Rhodey said.

Natasha reached a hand out towards him, where she now sat in Clint’s arms, and they fell silent, staring at her left hand, left arm, burnt and blackened and scarred like his own, stretching up towards her neck and singing her sleeves from her body. The hand that had held his in the other place, brutally burned from the power.

He grasped it anyway, fingers curling tight around each other.

“What did you do?” Steve asked, and Tony looked from his sister to his friend, caught sight of Peter along the way, staring and crying and so fucking relieved, and Tony smiled.

“We brought each other back,” he whispered, and then he blacked out.

**1985**

In a pitch-black bedroom, soft hair under his fingertips: “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Natasha sniffed, pressing her face into his side, her arm stretching around him tight. She’d never done this before, never let him see her weakness – he doubted anyone had seen Natasha as vulnerable, as human.

Tony felt the tears soak through his shirt, but he didn’t mention it, just kept up the slow, comforting stroking of her hair.

“It’s alright,” he promised, “it was just a nightmare.”

“No,” Natasha whispered. “It was real.”

He didn’t question this either, because he’d only known her for a year and from the slips of conversation he’d heard from his parents, Natasha’s history was a black stain of nothing. She wouldn’t tell them where she’d been and they couldn’t find the answers themselves. And from the way she once pinned Howard’s tie to the dining room table with a butter knife and insane accuracy led them all to believe she’d seen much worse than they could imagine.

So Tony stroked her hair and Natasha cried and tomorrow they would pretend it hadn’t happened. Knowing this, Tony said, “I love you,” and Natasha replied by squeezing him tighter.

“Don’t leave,” she mumbled into his shirt.

“I won’t,” he swore. “Ever,” he added, though that would be a lie come September, with college and a life that would take place far away from this mansion and his little sister, but—“I’ll always be here for you,” and he meant that.

He _meant_ that.

**2023**

“We match,” Natasha said softly, wincing as she wiggled her scarred fingers between them. There were still bandages wrapped around them, the fresh black and red hidden from sight. Still, she sat at the end of his hospital bed, her head tilted curiously to the side as she studied him.

“Not for long, probably,” he replied, equally as quiet. Beside his bed, Morgan and Peter were curled up chairs, blankets draped across them, fast asleep. “Cho said we might have to amputate.”

“Well.” She hummed, looking thoughtful before announcing, “We’ll chop mine off too and we can both have cool prosthetics.”

Tony snorted and shut his eyes.

**1991**

Tony swung Natasha around the dancefloor, the music loud and alive. She was a little tipsy and he a little more so; he’d slipped her a few martinis and a sip of his scotch, and she would pretend it never happened at all.

They danced and laughed and let people watch if that’s what they wanted to do, because the Stark siblings were happy, and they were together, and they had no idea yet that it wouldn’t always be that way.

**2023**

Tony sighed through his nose as he knocked the stack of plates on the floor.

For a moment, he just stared at them, and then he gingerly leaned down, picking them up one by one, first the whole ones and then the shattered pieces of china left behind. He could only do this one-handed, the bad one just a stump below his shoulder, the entire limb previously riddled with infection and necrotic skin.

“Mr Stark,” Peter said suddenly, and Tony blinked, unaware the kid had even entered the kitchen. “You should’ve shouted.” Peter leaned down beside him, collecting the broken pieces of plate and placing them on the counter with the rest.

“Throw them out,” Tony said, more a sigh than anything else, to avoid the annoyance that rose within him. Peter was just trying to help – _everyone_ was just trying to help – but Tony didn’t need _help,_ he needed a second arm.

“Are you sure?” Peter asked, frowning at the useless shards of china. Only two of the plates hadn’t broken of the five that hit the ground.

“They’re broken, Peter. Throw them out.”

“Okay, but I read about this really cool technique where people fix china back together with gold or something? And they look really cool—”

“Where am I supposed to find _gold?_ ”

“Well it’s not _really_ gold, but it’s something painted gold, I think, and you could totally—”

“They’re broken, Pete,” Tony sighed. He was sighing a lot recently, which—

He was _happy._ He was. But sometimes he just had a bad day where nothing went right; but at the end of the end of the world, and the start of a new one, he was fucking _joyous._ Everyone he loved was in the same place, bundled up warm in his cabin, or a short ride from the city away, and everyone – _everyone_ – was alive. Pepper and Rhodey and Happy and Natasha and Peter and Morgan; Harley and Nebula and Steve and Bruce and Thor and Clint—his entire family had survived the worst and pulled through on the other side.

And that was something to be excited about, even if sometimes he knocked an entire stack of plates off the side because he couldn’t carry them one handed.

Peter looked at him, head tilted to the side. “All broken things can be fixed, Tony. Of all people, you know that the best.”

And Tony watched, silent and wide-eyed as Peter collected all the pieces of broken china and carried them out to the workshop that Tony had barely stepped foot in since he came home, and two weeks later, he blinked in surprise when Pepper served up dinner on plates with golden splinters that spread like tree branches and veins and the lines between constellations like the ones he’d stared at on a dead, floating spaceship. And then he found Peter’s gaze and said thank you.

**2012**

“Anthony Edward Stark!”

“Oh shit—”

“What the ever-loving _fuck_ —"

“Hulk, buddy, you shouldn’t have saved my life—”

“—did you think you were doing, flying a _nuke_ into a _wormhole?!_ ”

“Well, I _thought_ —”

“Don’t take that tone with me.”

“What _tone?_ Nat! I’m just talking—”

“You’re using your pedantic voice. Don’t talk down to me right now.”

“Should we go?”

“Steven Grant Rogers if you move one step I will take this sceptre and ram it up your—”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Nat, it’s _fine._ I’m _fine._ ”

“A nuke, Tony!”

“Well that wasn’t my doing—”

“Into a _WORMHOLE!”_

“Also not my design.”

“Tony—”

“You were worried. I get it. I won’t do it again.”

“…”

“You wanna get shawarma? I’m in the mood for shawarma.”

“You don’t know what shawarma is.”

“Still. You wanna eat? Saving the world makes me hungry.”

“… Sure.”

**2023**

When Tony woke up, the television was still lighting the room but soundless. He’d gone to sleep propped against Natasha, his legs stretched out across Steve’s, and he awoke with his cheek indented with the wrinkles of Nat’s shirt, and a sleeping Steve Rogers leaned against him, arm wrapped loosely around Tony’s torso.

The whole room was silent, sleeping. In the television light, he could see Rhodey and Pepper asleep on the other sofa, Morgan settled between them in – begrudgingly – mismatched Captain America and Black Widow pyjamas. At their feet, Clint and Peter had taken the cushions and leant against the sofa, their heads tipped to the side, eyes closed. Bruce, in all his massiveness, on the beanbag chair, Thor sleeping under one arm and Nebula, possibly reluctantly, sleeping under the other.

In the quiet, Tony took a long, deep breath. Months had passed since the second apocalypse, and winter was peaking its edges into New York – soon they wouldn’t be able to do this without copious blankets and hot chocolate, and by that point, Tony was hoping to have a working prosthetic model for his arm in flashy red and gold, based on the designs he’d scanned from Barnes’— _Bucky’s—_ arm.

But for now, it was right on the precipice of warm and cold, the perfect temperature where Tony could relax and not worry about Peter’s need for six sweatshirts and Morgan’s talent at losing gloves. So he let out his breath, and relaxed into Nat’s side, only to feel her shift and rest her head against his.

“You awake?” she whispered into the dark.

“Mhm.”

“Thank you.”

“What for?”

“For everything.”

“Everything’s a lot.” He felt her lips turn up in a smile.

“You’ve done a lot,” she replied. “But—without you, there wouldn’t be this.”

He knew she meant the quiet, the movie night, the days teaching Morgan ballet and building a guest house on the lake’s edge. The dinners filled with laughter and playful shoving, teaching Steve and Morgan about the twenty-first century in tandem, redoing his and Pepper’s vows for everyone who wasn’t present, Peter divebombing into the lake and Clint growing out his mohawk into something more recognisable. It was the peace, she was thanking him for, the lack of fight, the way it drained out of them both, knowing their time had been served, their duties fulfilled; and the life, too, that beat on within them, and the knowledge that it was theirs to preserve now, forever and continuing; second, third and fourth chances theirs for the taking, to settle, to breathe, to begin again and not have to worry about the next battle, the next war—that was someone else’s problem now.

So he nodded, barely, gentle, and said, “Without you, there wouldn’t be this either.”

And Natasha pressed a kiss into his hair, settling back into the cushions as Tony shut his eyes, ready to sleep again.

Natasha whispered into the dark, “I love you.”

And, smirking, Tony replied, “I know.”

“Han Solo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> from bob dylan's 'oh sister', the song from which i took the title, which i totally told you to listen to nine chapters ago:
> 
> _"We grew up together_   
>  _From the cradle to the grave_   
>  _We died and were reborn_   
>  _And then mysteriously saved"_
> 
> what other fic writer gives you the ending you were so nervous about in the fuckin title???? if u didn't listen to the song those nerves are on u
> 
> thank u for reading!! hmu in the comments and yell at me!!

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i highkey believe you should yell at me in the comments, so,,, please do. give me thoughts and feelings and opinions! the next chapter will probably be up in the next 24 hours unless i say otherwise. ily guys <3


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